VET & TAFE
campusreview.com.au
Ending the apprentice ‘hunger games’
Time to address the disparity built
into the tertiary education system.
By Nick Klomp
A
wall of inequality was built into our
post-schooling system decades
ago, and today its legacy has left us
with an educational caste system of haves
and have-nots.
Despite countless reviews and attempts
to break it down, this wall is still dividing
ambitious school-leavers into two distinct
camps.
For those who choose university, the
system blesses them with the full support
and protection of an advanced, benevolent
economy.
For those who choose an apprenticeship,
however, the system retreats to a safe
distance to watch the sink-or-swim
spectacle of the vocational hunger games.
22
Never mind the fact that our sovereign
prosperity demands that both our white
and blue-collar workforces perform at their
optimum; ours is a system engineered to
shelter the journey of a university student
while leaving our emerging vocational
workforces exposed to jungle law.
The weirdest part of all this is that
there seems to be a compliant, peaceful
acceptance of this inequality, which you
simply couldn’t imagine were it any other
form of social injustice.
To be honest, the only reason I
happened across the historical disparity
built into our system is because I’ve
recently become the vice-chancellor
of one of Australia’s few dual-sector
universities (a university that delivers TAFE
courses alongside degrees).
I’m one of a handful of educational
leaders who sees first-hand how our
educational inequality manifests on both
sides of the wall.
Let me demonstrate how the system
discriminates by following the journey of
two of our students from enrolment to
employment, in a region with duelling
characteristics of high unemployment and
critical skills shortages.
Pete and Rebecca both graduate from
North Rockhampton High School with
good grades. Pete chooses university,
Rebecca prefers an apprenticeship.
Pete enrols in a Bachelor of Engineering,
is accepted, and can start studying in a
guaranteed spot within weeks. Should
Pete need it, fully funded programs exist
to give him confidence and academic
preparedness from even before his first
class, right through to graduation.
As an Australian citizen, Pete is entitled to
what is known as “the best loan you’ll ever
receive” – a low-interest HELP loan with
generous income-threshold repayments.
This loan covers 100 per cent of the
student contribution component of the
tuition fees for his four years of study
(expected to be about $37,000), with the
Commonwealth government funding
100 per cent of the remainder of his tuition
fees (which equates to about $69,000).
This arrangement is guaranteed for the
duration of Pete’s studies, regardless of
whether the government changes, or the
price of coal collapses, or even if he fails a
subject or two.
In total, my university receives about
$106,000 of taxpayer subsidies to give Pete
a world-class education, so that Australia
can benefit from Pete competing at a
global level over a lifetime as a professional
engineer.