VET
Are we being
The great growth in tertiary education is well underway but does everyone need a degree? asks Stuart Middleton
driven off course by demand?
It is amazing how messages that meet with approval get around and keep popping up in faraway places.
The latest Times Higher Education reports the pleasure that Professor Denise Bradley takes from that fact that, in her reported words,“ the government has stuck with the... system” that her 2008 report recommended.
The“ system” is one in which demand drives the number of places in higher education and the government pays for it. But it is a little strange that the increase of 75,500 domestic undergraduate enrolments since 2008 is said to be growth that grew. It almost certainly was unmet demand that was waiting to be met. In other words many people who previously would not get into higher education are now doing so.
This might be a good thing and it most certainly is in a country which has the goal of 40 per cent of the population( aged 24-35) having a degree qualification by 2025. Interestingly the UK also shares this goal but the US is content to have“ more degree-qualified people than anyone else”. Australia is well on the way with women in the target groups, it is claimed at the target level. Men drag the chain a bit.
Such targets and goals usually hide inequitable outcomes but the stated goal in Australia is that both women and men will reach this target. Great! What about the Torres Island and Aboriginal groups – they are currently at 5 per cent having a degree level qualification, while schooling and general education statistics show them to be participating in schooling to half the level of the wider Australian population.
The 75,500 new undergraduate students started to enter the employment market from 2012 on and they will find a rather flat market waiting for them. The level playing field that got them into the programs ends with graduation. And are they really needed?
The science of labour market prediction is little beyond the witchcraft level. That is a little uncharitable; they are more like wild guesses. It is difficult to get information both for Australia and for New Zealand that is cut along useful lines. It would be good to know what staple supply is needed simply to maintain the workforce.
For instance, there is a number of electricians that is needed to make the lights work and wire up new houses and all the kinds of things that electricians do. But how do we know the number to be trained and take account of attrition and maintain the group of skilled, trained, and certified electricians? What is the ratio of“ new” electricians that is needed as the national housing stock is increased?
Hoping that good luck will prevail and it will turn out about right is a littler flimsy as a basis for planning. So are large numerical targets for more graduates without the careful analysis of where they are needed. Western communities seem always to be short of doctors in hospitals but there are no dramatic increases in the supply – too expensive I would think. The supply of teachers never seems to be right – too many looking for positions followed in a cyclical pattern by too few.
Of course there are areas where there are plenty of doctors and plenty of teachers and that is where a lot of this supply / demand stuff breaks down. If access to higher education is to be made widely available and at greater cost then perhaps there could be some rules wrapped around it.
I suggest a social contract in which all graduates exiting from higher education would commit to work placements where they would be filling shortages and providing additional resources into some communities.
This might allow the bush and remote areas to have the quality social, medical and educational provision enjoyed in the towns. It could be that there is a quid pro quo which sees such service leading to payment, not only getting the wage they would earn but also a generous discount on student loans.
An interesting further development reported in Australia( and in England) is the recent move by a company called Coursera( founded by a Stanford IT professor) which aims to give certification for MOOCs( massive open online courses), the courses provided without charge by prestigious institutions( Yale, Harvard, Stanford and the like) and a lot of others.
For a fee, students seeking a certificate that attests to their MOOC success go through a process of being able to identify them – a typing test that identifies the special characteristics of the way they strike the keys is apparently as foolproof as fingerprints or staring into the camera at LA Airport.
So what with the Bradley inspired increases and the arrival of MOOC certificates it might not be long before the entire population has had access to higher education and has a certificate to prove it!
Everyone will be striding along the yellow brick road in a gloriously happy effort to find the rosy glow of Shangri La. But who spreads the bitumen on the road?
Stuart Middleton is director external relations at Manukau Institute of Technology, New Zealand.
38 | Issue 2 2013