Two weeks ago in my role as Chancellor of the University the Sunshine Coast I presided at the annual graduation ceremony.

Just over 1000 students graduated from the USC in the last 12 months, with 550 being present at the graduation ceremony.

I regard it as an honour and privilege to play a small role in marking this significant point of learning in a person's life. The University of the Sunshine Coast is one of the success stories in our region.

In marking this significant point of learning in a person's life, it is not simply issuing a certificate that indicates the person has an amount of knowledge at their disposal.

Genuine education, at every level, should never be seen as simply the acquisition of knowledge, but rather honing and developing the art of seeking knowledge and acquiring wisdom.

A university degree should primarily indicate the person's ability to seek knowledge and be able to apply it in a rapidly growing and changing world.

The key to this process is to develop the art of questioning. Simply storing knowledge of its own does very little, the questioning mind goes beyond what is already known, and seeks the next step.

This makes the art of education absolutely vital for everyone in our society. Education in its best sense is the key to a harmonious, balanced and prosperous future for the whole world.

The lack of questioning allowed the crass greed and selfishness of the American financial institutions to plunge the whole world into a financial crisis that threatened the very stability of the world itself.

Already, millions of people have had their security destroyed by the greed and selfishness of a few.

While capitalism has contributed so much to the world and has empowered millions in their own lives, it can show its weak point when it allows such crass selfishness to rise to the top unquestioned.

When we have a world where senior corporate CEOs are attracting annual income measured in the millions, while one-third of the world is starving, where the labour of one is regarded as being of less value disproportionately than another, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, then questions have to be asked.

It is only a process of education that encourages questioning that would provide the real safeguard against the selfishness of the few ruining the security of the many.

The real danger, as I see it, is that we live in a world that has seen the most rapid growth in science technology and knowledge that the world has ever known.

For those people of my generation, and even younger, who struggle with such complexities, it is all too easy to throw our hands in the air, proclaim we don't understand what is going on, and stop asking the important questions!

We do a lot in our country and in our world, and we have achieved a lot.

The most important engagement we ever make is to develop and promote the process of education. It's a great pity that we, one of the so-called rich nations, have decreased our spending on education when the rest of the developed world is increasing it!