Piecemeal pathways

It’s dangerous to go full steam ahead into a new tertiary sector without a roadmap, vice-chancellors have told Victorian TAFE bosses A second and even a third Bradley review may be needed to sort out the chaos emerging from the “impoverished debate” about the new tertiary education sector, Victoria’s TAFE heads were warned this month. University of Canberra vice-chancellor Professor Stephen Parker told the Victorian TAFE Association state conference that the tertiary landscape lacked a clear operating framework because debates about the new sector had “lacked depth, imagination and attention to system design”. “The Bradley review ran out of time to do the full job,” Parker told the ‘TAFE in the tertiary landscape’ conference. “It threw in some ideas about tertiary without really thinking about curriculum, pedagogy and structure. It avoided any attempt to put forward a blueprint for a future system, preferring to leave it to better informed markets – student demand-driven funding, with exposure of the performance of universities. “We’ve thrown a whole load of firecrackers into the system. Insufficient thought has gone into what tertiary really means and what system we’re trying to design. We’re going to need Bradley 2 and possibly Bradley 3 if we want to do this in an orderly way, rather than just let pieces land where they fall.” Parker was one of three vice-chancellors who gave the conference a university perspective on the new tertiary landscape and TAFE’s place in it. The three exemplified the disparate pathways emerging in different universities, with Parker revealing plans for UC’s new “omniversity” (CR, 17.05.10) while La Trobe University vice-chancellor Professor Paul Johnson championed UK-style foundation degrees and Deakin University boss Professor Sally Walker outlined the university-TAFE agreements underpinning the ‘Deakin at your doorstep’ program. Last month, Swinburne University also announced its own new pathway, under which higher education offers are packaged with all of its diplomas and advanced diplomas (CR, 03.05.10). Johnson said the preliminary compact statements released in March suggested all universities would be developing pathways. “They’re going full speed ahead for collaboration and cooperation,” he said. “You won’t just be seeing ‘Deakin at your doorstep’. No doubt there’ll be Canberra in your kitchen, La Trobe in your loungeroom and who knows what else?” “The risk, despite the great work at UC and Deakin, is that it’s done in a piecemeal manner. In the end, there will be negotiation fatigue among industry and employer partners because they’ll have to have bilateral discussions with a whole range of universities. Many of them will say, we just don’t have time to do that. “The consequences of not having an orderly and structured system will be much higher costs for much less benefit.” Students will also be befuddled by the new arrangements, Johnson said. “We run the risk of creating the sort of obfuscation and complexity that exists in the market for mobile phones. “What are you actually paying for, and what service will you get? You don’t know until you’ve locked yourself in. Because there is no consistency between institutions and certainly between states, they may find they’ve locked themselves into something that is not right for them. “We will end up with a huge amount of work without creating anything clear and systematic for the people who matter – the students. We need a clear national structure. We need commonly agreed categories and criteria. And we need to give a better deal to prospective students so they know what they’re signing up for.” Parker said the evolving integration models could lead to shifts of students between regions and different kinds of institutions. “It only takes about a 5 per cent shift to have a tipping effect on a community or an institution,” he said. He said it was time to develop system design, curriculum innovation and integrated funding arrangements. “We need more than just sequential time in one sector and then another. We need to think about that end product, and work backwards to the beginning of the curriculum to design it properly. “The government has set aside a mere $402 million for structural adjustment, which will be inadequate to handle the consequences of all of this.” However, Walker said there was already a framework – the Australian Qualifications Framework – which both outlined and safeguarded the range of tertiary education programs. “I think the system will work itself out,” she said. “I like the idea that there can be distinctive missions. We have to allow for authenticity. If some universities were asked to do foundation programs, they wouldn’t have the personal characteristics to do it. It’s really important that we don’t dull the possibility of innovation.” However, former Victorian TAFE head Kim Bannikoff, who until recently was director of the Queensland Studies Authority, said he agreed systemic reform in Australia at present was “a little bit chaotic”. “There’s real folly in going ahead with separate VET and higher education regulators, even if only in the short term. The interest groups on both sides of the equation will come together in spades and dig trenches, and it will be very difficult to get a single regulatory environment out of the current processes.” A TAFE figure told Campus Review that vice-chancellors, having avoided discussing pathways for years, now expected a framework to fall at their feet. “We’ve been trying to talk with universities about pathways for the past 12 years. It would have been nice if they’d come up with some of these ideas then.”