Standing Committee on Employment, Education
and Workplace Relations
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Submission 21
SUBMISSION FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES STANDING COMMITTEE ON EMPLOYMENT, EDUCATION
AND TRAINING
INQUIRY INTO THE APPROPRIATE ROLES OF INSTITUTES OF TECHNICAL AND FURTHER
EDUCATION
BACKGROUND
The University of South Australia is the largest of the three South Australian
universities, with a student population of over 24,000 and more than 2000
staff. The mission of the University is summarised as
Educating Professionals - Applying Knowledge - Serving the Community.
The University has four metropolitan campuses and one at Whyalla which
is the only regional campus in South Australia. Our nine faculties offer
courses from diplomas to PhDs in a wide range of fields, with an emphasis
on education as a foundation for professional practice and lifelong learning.
By working in close collaboration with employers and professional associations,
the University ensures that its graduates are well prepared to contribute
to the future development of their professions and the economy. In the
annual Graduate Careers Council of Australia Graduate Destination Survey,
the University's graduates report the highest employment rate of the three
South Australian Universities.
The University of South Australia is strongly committed to achieving
greater equality of access to higher education. This commitment is, at
its most formal, legislative and structural. The Act establishing the
University requires it to meet the educational needs of Indigenous Australians
and other educationally disadvantaged groups. This commitment is underpinned
by a distinctive approach to equity planning, implementation and evaluation
which is based on systematic analysis of data and is embedded at every
level of the University's planning and quality improvement processes.
In February 1996, the University signed a five year Memorandum of Understanding
(1996-2000) with SA DETAFE which builds upon and expands an earlier three
year Memorandum of Agreement (1992-1995). In broad terms these formal
agreements give senior level and public expression to a collaborative
approach to course articulation and credit transfer, sharing of facilities,
and cooperation in program delivery, research, strategic planning and
marketing. Of the three universities in the state, the University of South
Australia has the largest number of students with prior TAFE experience.
In 1995 they constituted over 20% of all undergraduates and nearly a third
of students at the regional Whyalla Campus.
RESPONSE TO TERMS OF REFERENCE
the appropriate roles of institutes of technical and further education;
and the extent to which those roles should overlap with universities.
Government policies and a reduction in public funding for tertiary education
have encouraged increasing competition between universities, TAFE colleges
and private providers. Given the growing need for universities and TAFE
colleges to earn revenue from alternative sources it would be surprising
if they did not undertake some activities which could just as well be
located in institutions of another kind - a university type course in
TAFE, or vice versa; a commercial activity in either which could well
be located in the private sector; and so on.
There is no need to be concerned about overlap at the edges of university/TAFE
relationships. Some level of overlap can enhance the quality of offerings
and provide students with more choices. However, the core offerings of
universities and TAFE colleges are still distinct and there are advantages
for Australia in maintaining distinct sectors while encouraging collaboration,
cooperation and competition between them.
The core for TAFE
TAFE programs tend to be industry based and industry driven. The core
for TAFE is training (both skills and knowledge, but with an emphasis
on the former) which prepares the graduate for employment in an existing
position such that the graduate of TAFE has most of the 'know how' they
need on day one.
TAFE programs are increasingly modularised and derived from generic national
or state clusters of modules. This 'one size fits all' structure has distinct
advantages, eg ease of response to client demand, but the content is prescribed,
sequential and difficult to adapt to local or varying contexts. As a consequence,
learners tend to see the content as non-contextual and non-contestable.
The core for Universities
University programs teach theoretical and applied knowledge, underpinned
by research and scholarship. The core for universities is education
(both skills and knowledge, but with an emphasis on the latter) which
prepares graduates for a range of economic and social roles by developing
an appreciation of their society and a capacity for lifelong learning.
While a university course may be restricted to one profession it aims
to develop a set of cognitive and social capacities which support active
participation as a citizen and professional. Universities are necessarily
devoted to knowledge, and their students must have an interest in ideas,
in a way that is not fundamental to TAFE study.
Graduates of TAFE who have become interested in what lies behind the
'how to' or who wish to develop more theoretical ways of understanding
and analysing the world and their work may want to undertake university
study. In doing so they should not be required to relearn anything and
should be given full credit for all their relevant learning. However,
the level of credit needs to be determined by careful consideration of
the knowledge terrain and learning outcomes of the relevant courses. Given
the fundamental differentiation between the knowledge base and learning
goals of TAFE and university courses, the basis and extent of credit to
be given is by no means automatic and varies considerably across disciplines.
In other words, the learning domains of TAFE and universities do not meet
in a clean, neat seam but in a complex, multilayered and ragged pattern
due to deep differences in the relationship across different disciplines.
On the other hand, there is also a clear trend of university graduates
moving from university to TAFE after graduation to gain end on 'know how',
eg following a Bachelor in Visual Arts with a TAFE Diploma in Small Business.
This pathway is more common where the universities do not offer post-graduate
coursework awards in the relevant fields. There is capacity for greater
collaboration in articulating pathways in this direction.
Structural Issues
Structural amalgamation of universities and TAFEs has been proposed as
holding out potential advantages such as:
- an increase in industry-focused learning outcomes
- resource efficiencies
- greater collaboration in learning pathways, teaching, research
and consultancy
However, there is no clear evidence that the expected benefits have always
resulted from those structural amalgamations which have already occurred.
The Ministerial Review on the Provision of Technical and Further Education
in the Melbourne Metropolitan Area considered this question in its August
1997 Options Paper. It compared universities such as Monash, Deakin and
Latrobe which have formed alliances with TAFE institutions with universities
such as RMIT, VUT and Swinburne where there is some level of structural
integration with TAFE. While the latter enrolled proportionally more students
with a TAFE background in 1996, the former group, due to their size, enrolled
a larger number of such students. The paper noted that alliances 'provide
an incentive for the provision of credit transfer and articulation because
of the functional (rather than structural) nature of the alliance' 1
The University of South Australia has developed extensive articulation
and credit transfer pathways with TAFE SA despite being structurally distinct.
In addition, it has developed a diverse series of arrangements in the
areas of student support services (especially in non-metropolitan locations),
collaborative program delivery, joint technology use and offshore marketing.
Each of these has emerged from discipline or location specific collaboration
rather than being imposed in an artificial way across whole institutions.
This development can be characterised as greater but more highly selective
forms of bilateral collaboration, initiated and entered into at the course,
school and faculty level with various parts of TAFE SA, as opposed to
whole of Organisation cooperation or psuedo-amalgamation. Such collaboration
is deeper and more distinct, with higher levels of commitment on both
sides. Examples of this include:
Where TAFE courses and the University's courses in a particular discipline
are related and complementary, they can usually be clearly differentiated
by the level of technical skill in the former and the level of history,
theory and research base in the latter. Where this differentiation
is clear and readily accepted, close and strategic collaboration can
be highly creative, extensive and mutually enhancing. For example,
the University of South Australia and the Spencer Institute of TAFE
collaborate to deliver engineering programs in the industrial town
of Whyalla. TAFE and University staff teach specified components of
each other's courses, and specialist equipment and facilities are
shared. The key here is that the courses are clearly differentiated
from each other - the University specialised in electrical and electronic
engineering and the TAFE in mechanical engineering. Hence the collaboration
strengthens the courses of both the University and TAFE and broadens
the pathways for students.
Maximising the advantages gained from collaboration with TAFE by
the development of double and joint awards where this is academically
feasible and attractive to students. In such cases both organisations
become jointly responsible for the quality of the award and share
a mutual interest in its success. Double degrees in some discipline
areas are attractive to prospective students, combining as they do
competency based skills training with the more theoretically based
academic programs offering the capacity to go on to higher levels
of qualifications.
The cooperative development and electronic delivery of programs in
the distance mode may involve the sharing of flexible delivery support
under an appropriate framework in the interests of efficiencies as
well as increased effectiveness of such services for students. The
modification and adaption of joint TAFE/University online course packages
for marketing to Asia via the internet is also an interesting possibility.
With the increasing knowledge base required for most jobs, the proportion
of the population who expect and need a university education is expanding,
and the higher education sector in Australia is well placed to cater for
this expansion. However, there is also potential for the expansion of
the TAFE sector as the number of students completing Year 12 declines.
On this analysis, we should expect a flow of programs from on-the-job
training into TAFE, and a flow from TAFE into the Universities. It does
not follow from this flow that the boundaries have become blurred or that
there is no need for the distinction.
Government incentives should be directed at greater collaboration between
two distinct sectors on a discipline by discipline basis where this offers
specific advantages. The distinctly different industrial awards for university
and TAFE staff currently impedes the movement of staff between the two
sectors. Any move which acknowledges the differences in roles but facilitates
interchangeability of expertise would be a major improvement. There are
advantages for the nation in having two strong and distinct sectors. Where
a university and TAFE college have strong links and collaborative programs
this provides a greater breadth of courses than a single institution
could deliver.
' Ministerial Review on the Provision of Technical and Further Education
in the Melbourne Metropolitan Area Options Paper, August 1997, pp25-26
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