campusreview.com.au
VET & TAFE
One needs the other
Australian universities are in turmoil
and that’s not good for VET.
By Don Perlgut
Following new plans for “job
ready” graduates released by the
Commonwealth Government,
Australian universities are in turmoil.
This follows persistent opposition by the
government to prevent universities from
participating in JobKeeper.
Commonwealth Government plans
announced by Minister Dan Tehan will
increase the cost of humanities degrees,
cut the costs of other degrees, and increase
resources for regional universities. The
Minister’s press release states the rationale:
“University students who study in areas
of expected employment growth will pay
less for their degree as the Government
incentivises students to make more jobrelevant
decisions about their education.”
There are both winners and losers in the
government’s plans, which still need to
be passed by the senate. Although some
groups – especially regional and smaller
universities – welcomed the changes,
others did not: “Baffling,” says former
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
“It’s about [both] funding and ideology,”
says Michelle Grattan. The government’s
attempts to encourage people into some
courses and away from humanities and
social sciences by changing their cost to
students will fail, predicts Bruce Chapman,
architect of HECS.
“What we call the price elasticity of
demand for education is very, very low,”
he says.
Degrees in humanities, society and
culture, and communications have been
singled out as irrelevant, “yet the skills
fostered in these degrees are in high
demand: critical thinking, problem-solving,
collaboration, strong writing prowess
and people skills … translate across the
employment sector,” write John Fischetti
and Catharine Coleborne.
The government “has misunderstood the
distinction between areas of employment,
which need more people building a career
within them (for example, teaching), and
areas of study that are already overloaded
with graduates (for example, teaching),”
writes Peter Van Onselen.
“Can the government predict the jobs
of the future?” asks Professor David Peetz,
a researcher who specialises in the future
of work. His conclusion: “The further you
look ahead, the less useful the present is
as a guide. This is especially the case in
employment because, in a quickly changing
world, technology is hard to predict and
changing consumption patterns even harder.”
In ‘The vocationalisation of university
education’, Ian Marshman and Frank Larkins
write that, “undergraduate education is now
more narrowly about training for a job, no
longer laying the foundations for careers of
the future”. They identify six strategic issues
with this approach:
• unapologetic pivoting of undergraduate
education towards creating a job-ready
workforce
• apparent inconsistent messaging within
the policy
• overall funding for an undergraduate
place will decline
• absence of any initiatives to support
universities in rebuilding international
student demand
• likely differentiated impact that the
Job-ready Package will have for individual
universities, and
• dealing with the fallout of the devaluing
of the humanities and social sciences.
The planned changes come on top of
devastating opposition by the government
that has prevented public universities from
participating in JobKeeper. It’s partly culture
wars, writes Gavin Moodie. The result,
Margaret Simons says: universities will need
to shrink to survive.
WHAT DOES THE ANNOUNCEMENT
MEAN FOR AUSTRALIAN VET
AND ADULT AND COMMUNITY
EDUCATION?
The proposed ‘vocationalisation’ of
university education is not good for
Australian vocational education and training
(VET) and adult and community education
(ACE). A crisis in any sector of postsecondary
education – and believe me, this
is a crisis – impacts all of the other sectors.
If the planned university changes were
accompanied by a comprehensive strategy
to lift both the funding and structure of VET,
we might understand. But there appears to
be no connection between the two. Worse
still, the differences between university
education and VET look muddier than ever,
not the seamless system that many hope for.
To be fair, Australian universities and
humanities have done themselves no
favours. Large lecture courses taught by
part-time casual academics have been
financially profitable for the universities, but
have decreased the quality of education
and turned off many potential arts and
humanities students.
Many university academics are primarily
interested in their own research and
publications, frequently with very small
audiences, and not sufficiently interested in
their students. Universities have not given
much weight to the quality of teaching and
undergraduate student satisfaction. They
have also assumed that an unbalanced
international student cohort, many from
one country – China – would continue
indefinitely. Large Vice Chancellor salaries
and high student to staff ratios means that
universities have lost much political and
broad public support.
Governments, both Coalition and Labor,
have encouraged these trends for some
time. But now the coronavirus pandemic is
bringing Australian universities to their knees.
Australian VET and ACE sectors need vital
universities, with clear pathways that are
so sadly lacking. The ray of hope in these
announcements is that regional universities,
which historically are more open to ACE
provider pathways, may benefit.
Australian VET also needs university
graduates for teaching and curriculum
design. With literacy, language and numeracy
needs remaining high, we desperately need
well-trained LLN teachers. ■
Dr Don Perlgut is the CEO of Community
Colleges Australia.
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