Fight or feint?

Ignore, adapt or fight? This is one of the questions university and TAFE administrators will need to confront if they want to clear some of the roadblocks between vocational education and training (VET) and higher education, according to a high-level meeting organised last month by TAFE NSW. The meeting of university and TAFE chiefs and policy leaders heard that institutions would need to take a strategic approach to deal with funding and curriculum anomalies hindering links between the sectors, in order for TAFEs to play a much-needed role in boosting participation and equity in higher education. The meeting, held at TAFE NSW’s Sydney Institute, heard that training packages – bundles of nationally endorsed standards and qualifications, which form the basis of VET – were blocking the flow of VET students into higher education. Training packages don’t provide the underpinning disciplinary knowledge and higher order thinking skills that students need when they reach university, participants said. Training packages offer a “tick the box” approach to education which university administrators distrust, and consequently they discourage articulation arrangements between the two sectors, the meeting heard. But Professor Shirley Alexander, deputy vice-chancellor (teaching, learning and equity) with UTS, questioned whether this view was anything more than a perception. “Over the past 12 months there have been increasing complaints from academic staff – and they’re nothing more than assertions – that the quality of students coming from TAFE has declined as a direct result of competency-based training. Those are assertions, but where’s the actual research evidence? We should be investigating those claims so that we can make decisions based on evidence rather than Chinese whispers. “If we were going to pick two areas, I’d pick the areas where the complaints are loudest – and that’s IT and business.” Engineering was nominated as another area for investigation, but some participants said training packages should be bypassed altogether, and that it would be better to develop courses that could be taught in both sectors. TAFE NSW deputy director-general Marie Persson said both approaches could work. “I think it’s a great idea to pick a couple of discrete areas where we could research the problems with training packages, and experiment with adapting them. “But I don’t want to dismiss the possibility of also developing different sorts of higher education articulation pathways.” Dr Leesa Wheelahan, senior lecturer in adult and vocational education at Griffith University, said institutions should adopt England’s approach. “Rather than get rid of an old program, they just create a new one and the old one becomes residual,” she told the meeting. “I don’t think we’re ever going to get rid of training packages. I have absolutely no confidence that anything’s going to fundamentally change them. The problems are going to remain. But if higher education funding becomes available to TAFEs, maybe that’s one way of creating a more robust alternative that’s vocationally focussed – like foundation degrees.” However it’s not clear just how much higher education funding will be made available to TAFEs. While VET providers have been embraced by the federal government’s infrastructure fund, the Education Investment Fund (EIF), they’re excluded – so far, at any rate – from plans for an entitlement-based funding system for higher education teaching and learning (CR, 25.05.09). They’re also excluded from the structural adjustment fund. The $202 million fund, announced in the May budget, will “assist higher education institutions adapt to the introduction of a demanddriven system for Australian government-funded higher education places,” according to the budget papers. It will be topped up by another $200 million allocation, from round three of the EIF, to pay for capital works associated with higher education structural adjustment. But according to a budget media release, only some of the funds will be made available to VET providers, and only for projects in partnership with universities. And this allocation wasn’t part of last week’s call for round three bids, with the government saying it would be made available later through a separate process. Bruce MacKenzie, chief executive of Victoria’s Holmesglen TAFE, told the roundtable that the structural adjustment fund would be an ideal way of developing foundation degrees. “Four-year degrees designed to take low socioeconomic background students who have learning disadvantages are something that could be offered very effectively at TAFEs, and could well be supported by the Commonwealth government,” he said. Barry Peddle, director of TAFE NSW’s South Western Sydney Institute, told the roundtable it made no sense to foster cooperation between the sectors by making a “pile of money” available to just one of the sectors. He said TAFEs and universities alike needed to challenge the policy, and suggest alternatives. “The structural adjustment money should drive cooperation by putting dollars into it, through cooperatives, partnerships or any appropriate arrangements,” he said.