Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Workplace Relations

Inquiry into the Role of Institutes of TAFE
Submissions

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Submission 14

Southern Cross University

Friday, October 24, 1997

Submission: Inquiry into the Appropriate Roles of Institutes of Technical and Further Education.

 

It is important to recognise that the whole of the post compulsory sector is involved in vocational education, upper secondary schools, TAFE, ACE and universities.

We are of the view that there are two distinct domains in which the Minister's two questions have to be answered.

The first, for individuals undertaking study for entry/re-entry into the workforce and for employees wishing to advantage their own career interests.

The second, to meet the Human Resource Development (HRD) needs of enterprises that are increasingly facing global competition and/competition policy.

In the first domain there has been a fairly clear-cut division of Labour between the role of TAFE and universities. TAFE has focused on the technical skills and knowledge needed to be operationally effective in the workplace, and universities have focused on the professions, concept and theory, and intellectual development needed to work and manage in complex, novel, changing and ambiguous settings. The route students took was largely based on school performance and to a lesser extent individual choice. This front-end-loading model of education still has relevance for individuals pursuing their own career interests, whether in, or preparing to enter the workforce.

The AQF has provided a useful instrument to differentiate the roles of institutions and to provide the means of articulating between them.

The need for the university sector and TAFE to work together closely will increase over the next ten to twenty years. We see articulation from TAFE to university study, and vice-versa as a key issue to be addressed, as well as processes for Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL), It is important that students be able to access the relevant type and level of course needed for their advancement over their working lives, and this may involve a combination of TAFE and university study.

However, we firmly believe that the distinction between awards offered by the different sectors should be preserved through legislation as well as through the different paradigms of learning offered in two sectors. Offering TAFE the opportunity to award degrees would signal a return to the binary system of higher education which existed pre-Dawkins, and would lead to growing pressures for TA FE College,; to be funded and governed as universities.

Currently, any university wishing to offer AQF awards is required to have its courses rigorously examined and accredited by state accrediting agencies. Reciprocally, any non-university institution wishing to offer degrees should only be permitted to do so in collaboration with a university, and be subjecgt to the same rigorous scrutiny by university academic boards as other awards.

RECOMMENDATION 1:

That clear processes and schedules for articulation be developed by both universities and TAFE colleges, and that degrees be awarded only by universities, including degrees for courses of institutions working in collaboration with a university, where such courses are accredited and monitored by the relevant university.

The overlap with universities in this first domain should be to enhance choice in regional communities and to facilitate articulation nationally.

In the second HRD domain, the front-end-loading model becomes decreasingly relevant for enterprises as they need to remain profitable and viable in the face of increasing global competition and the impact of competition policy. For the HRD function, profitability becomes the structuring dynamic. In that environment two major factors influence the level, extent and the nature of skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviour, and the way in which they can be developed. Firstly, first-world-wages can only be sustained in the high technology, knowledge and information based industries. Secondly, the increasing rate of change and the breadth of its impact on the workforce, require a speed of response, and a level of involvement of industry that the front-end-loading model is incapable of delivering.

The needs of enterprises span the whole post compulsory educational spectrum. However, the capabilities that the universities have traditionally provided have become increasingly dominant. Given the enterprise's need and desire for a one-stop-shop, the concept of overlapping roles is inappropriate. Rather, enterprise's need a single provider who can deliver and or broker over the range of their needs. Who provides/partners should be decided by the enterprise through the 'user choice' and tendering mechanisms. This would put TAFE, individual universities and private providers in direct competition with one another.

Here the appropriate resourcing models are 'user choice' for curriculum development and performance based tenders for delivery (recurrent funding). While these mechanisms currently only operate in the VET sector, they should be expanded to include the university sector. (In the early 90's the state payroll tax funded the Victorian Education Foundation, the NSW Education Foundation and the Queensland Education Foundation all operated across the VET and university sector for Curriculum development).

That begs the question of the balance of benefit between the enterprise and the State.. We would suggest that the State should fund the bulk of the curriculum development and enterprise the bulk of the recurrent expenditure.

RECOMMENDATION 2

That the 'user choice' model of funding be broadened to enable employers to choose

their preferred provider across the whole post compulsory sector.

Our 10 years of experience in partnership with 26 varied enterprises, and the findings of national studies, suggest that the following are important factors in this second domain.

• A one-stop-shop from which the learning needs of all of an enterprise's employees can be met.
• Qualifications as such are not important for the employer, but they are important in the motivation of their employees. Therefore RPL, articulation, designer degrees and individual learning contracts are important considerations.
• Each employer's needs are unique. There needs to be a capacity for purpose designed courses including elements based on work-based learning.
• Industry knows its needs, has much of the required knowledge expertise and can contribute to the delivery and administration of programs.
• Skills and knowledge are important but not sufficient. Industry needs capable people, people who have the nccessary skills, knowledge and attributes that, combined with values and self esteem, enables them to manage themselves in both familiar and unfamiliar circumstances.

• Staff increasingly need a broadly based education that covers the technical, the managerial and the liberal. Staff need to understand the world in which they work and live. They need to make ethical, and culturally and environmentally responsible decisions. They need to know the law. All of this points towards the curriculum that a university can offer.

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