It’s time for unified protocols

The peak university and TAFE bodies have teamed up in outlining the boundaries of the emerging tertiary sector. John Ross reports. A unified set of national tertiary education protocols should be established, allowing for a single approval process for higher education and VET providers and a staged extension of eligibility for government higher education funding. And the tertiary system should begin at the diploma level. These are key outcomes of a joint project by the peak university and TAFE bodies, which has led to an unprecedented meeting of minds of vice-chancellors and TAFE chiefs. “It’s about new types of tertiary institutions that can better cater for the needs and aspirations of students. It’s also about the need for new protocols that reflect a greater diversity of operations,” said Pam Caven, acting CEO of TAFE Directors Australia (TDA). A statement of agreement from UA and TDA proposes unified protocols covering the new tertiary sector. They would allow for different types of organisations, permitting distinct regulatory and funding arrangements while facilitating a single approval process and follow up audits. The statement proposes clear boundaries for the new tertiary system, with certificate-level qualifications excluded. “UA and TDA propose that tertiary education qualifications are those at diploma level and above, including where these qualifications may embed pathways from the qualification level below,” it says. “This is generally consistent with the OECD’s International Standard Classification of Education definition.” The statement acknowledges that the term tertiary has been used to encompass the full gamut of VET and higher. But it says there’s now a need for more precision – “and to exclude, for instance, certificates level I and II which relate more to equivalence to secondary school”. Caven said that while certificate III and IV qualifications were an extremely important part of most TAFEs’ offerings, they didn’t have a critical role – unlike diplomas – in higher education pathways. The statement suggests articulation pathways could be improved by developing alternative curricula for upper-level VET courses. It says the government should consider “specific funding for VET courses outside industry training packages designed to articulate into HE qualifications”. This approach could help address the mismatch between “competency-based” VET and “knowledge based” higher education, which many commentators believe is a key impediment to articulation between the two sectors. Caven said that by developing non competency-based diplomas and advanced diplomas, the VET sector could sort out the mismatch issues internally – rather than leaving universities to grapple with the problem at the point of articulation between the two sectors. The statement says different types of organisations could be classified according to criteria such as self-accrediting status, research capability, course range and financial and governance capacity. Unified protocols would facilitate better information for students. They’d also provide a mechanism for the federal government “to expand its student demand-driven funding system through a staged extension of eligibility”. Tertiary education funding should be designed to cover “a reasonable estimate of the required cost of provision”, with similar amounts provided for similar outcomes and performance funding applied in an even-handed way. Funding should also enable students to choose “the best course of study or combination of courses for their particular circumstances and aspirations”, it adds. The statement also says the two sectors need a common “data dictionary” to facilitate compatible data collection and reporting arrangements. And it says the tertiary sector should have a two-way flow. “The dominant consideration in moving towards a single tertiary regulator should be to improve the opportunity for students to move in both directions between VET and higher education, according to their capacities and aspirations at different stages of life,” it says. “Regulations and processes that create barriers to such movement (however unintentionally) should be reviewed in this light.” This will add voice to criticisms of the eligibility criteria in Victoria’s new demand-driven skills system (***CR, 19.04.10), which allocates government-funded VET places only to people undertaking progressively higher level qualifications. Associate Professor Leesa Wheelahan of the LH Martin Institute, said the statement represented a significant step in VET-higher education collaboration. The statement also reflected the need to give TAFEs a much broader role than simply delivering training packages, she said. “It recognises the crucial role TAFE has in tertiary education more broadly, and this will be critical to the achievement of the government’s equity and participation targets. “It will help increase pressure on government to break out of the narrow role it has for VET at the moment.” Wheelahan said the proposed tertiary definition was sensible. “But we have to be careful that lower-level programs don’t become residual, and offered by institutions that are residual,” she said. This danger was unlikely, she said, so long as tertiary institutions continued to offer lower-level qualifications – particularly certificates III and IV – and embedded them in their pathways to higher level qualifications. Professor Marcia Devlin, chair in higher education research at Deakin University, said the UA-TDA proposals went to the heart of the state-federal divide in tertiary education. “Funding, governance regulatory frameworks and quality assurance are enormously complex matters and there would be a large amount of devil in the detail to come on these proposals,” she said. “These joint proposals will be welcomed by most, but an appropriate process to examine the detail will need to be established quickly so that the ideas can be considered properly.” Dr Gavin Moodie, policy adviser to RMIT University, said the next stage of student-based funding should be to extend eligibility to TAFEs as public institutes of tertiary education. Moodie and Wheelahan said regulatory mismatches – particularly the separate development of the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency and the national VET regulator – constituted a major threat to a coherent tertiary education sector.