Postgraduate qualifications come to VET

Vocational education and training’s status as the poor relation of higher education is being directly challenged by the growth of new postgraduate qualifications offered by some TAFE institutes. The vocational graduate certificate and the vocational graduate diploma align under the Australian Qualifications Framework to the graduate certificates and diplomas offered by universities – that is, above a bachelor degree and immediately below a masters. On this reckoning, a holder of a vocational graduate certificate or diploma could be counted in the top 6 per cent of working-age Australians by level of highest qualification. “Vocational graduate qualifications are breaking new ground. The boundaries between VET and higher education are becoming increasingly blurred as universities re-evaluate conventional wisdom about the nature of knowledge and professional work. The practical element is featured more and more in both respects,” says Annie Priest, author of a new paper for the NCVER on vocational postgraduate qualifications. She says the qualifications broaden the range of pathways between VET and higher education, and offer more flexible entry pathways into emerging occupations. While Priest says the AQF descriptors for vocational graduate certificates and diplomas are rigorous, they differ from more vocationally applied higher education degrees in that VET applies progressively higher order skills and knowledge to an established job context, whereas higher education starts with the theory and applies it in progressively more practical contexts. In this light, questions arise as to how the theoretical knowledge that is explicitly mandated at higher AQF levels can be delivered within the competency-based framework that sets VET apart from higher education. Priest argues that new understandings of intelligence, learning and the nature of knowledge are rendering obsolete the distinction between theory and practice that lies at the heart of the divide between VET and higher education. She sees no serious formal obstacle to VET and higher education sharing the same qualification terrain. Southbank, which is a forerunner in the delivery of postgraduate VET qualifications, identified educational design (also known as instructional or learning design) as an ideal area in which to deliver such qualifications. It is a fairly new field “at the interface of teaching and learning, writing, information technology and multimedia design”, there is no recognised pathway into the field, and people with the right mix of skills and experience are hard to find. Even within the field, job roles vary greatly. Priest says the competency approach may have distinct advantages at this qualification level over more conventional learning approaches because it caters for learners working at different speeds and integrates knowledge from the workplace tasks that demand working across disciplines. “Competencies mirror how people use knowledge in complex ways in their jobs and daily lives,” she concludes. “The significance of the vocational graduate qualifications is that the VET sector is moving to meet higher education in the middle. These qualifications also show that competency-based learning is no barrier to transmission of higher knowledge. Indeed, three of the four educational design industry representatives on the advisory committee said at the end of the project that they’d encourage their staff to take these qualifications rather than a university qualification in this field. In time, I think most people will come to see the sectoral divide as something of an anachronism.” Southbank is offering 11 graduate certificates and three graduate diplomas in architecture and building, business, teaching, biotechnology and hospitality, as well as educational design. Go to www.ncver.edu.au/publications/2099.html and www.southbank.edu.au/site/programs/downloads/VGQguide.pdf

Postgraduate qualifications come to VET

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Australian Signals Directorate

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