Domestic manufacturing has all but disappeared, the mining boom is long over, and jobs like IT support are increasingly being offshored. Meanwhile, innovation is in, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. So, where does this leave ...

Sydney got its very own Stanford with the launch of the Sydney School of Entrepreneurship (SSE) on Wednesday. Unlike the prestigious Palo Alto tech-oriented university, however, the SSE will welcome students from all academic backgrounds. In fact, the SSE is ...

In the 1990s, Peter Noonan says, our VET sector was the envy of the rest of the Asia-Pacific. Now, the professor of tertiary education policy at Victoria University's Mitchell Institute thinks it might be the other way round. At a recent Hong Kong-based ...

Following a brief budget uplift, it’s been a tumultuous time for the vocational education sector. TAFE enrolment numbers have plummeted in NSW and Victoria, causing TAFE NSW to announce plans to self-accredit. To make matters worse, the government’s National Innovation and ...

Vocation’s recent listing on the Australian Stock Exchange brings a new level of public scrutiny to revenue models for the sector. By John Mitchell. When speakers at conferences decide to abandon their PowerPoint slides and speak unscripted, they often reveal ...

  Reform is necessary to make integrated higher education qualifications more accessible and equitable. By Martin Riordan. TAFE vocational degrees and higher education qualifications have been developed in response to increasing industry demand for higher knowledge, technology skills and work-ready ...

VET’s charmers have few snakes dancing to their tune. By John Mitchell. Hanging on the wall in my office is a print I purchased long ago of a Michael Leunig cartoon that depicts a character dressed up as a snake ...

More students means more pressure on every dollar spent. By Dallas Bastian. Enrolments have surged at universities and TAFEs, according to a recent report, and universities may struggle to deal with the increase. The IBISWorld Report on higher education in ...

Forty years after Kangan, TAFE is still facing many of the same problems; it’s time to break that cycle. By Adrian Marron. Twenty years ago, I assisted a colleague in creating a strategic 10-year vision for our college. Re-reading it ...

Here are five ways the sector can improve itself, and Australia, in the year ahead. By Stephen Conway. TAFE in Australia needs to be promoted at all opportunities for what it is and what it contributes to the way of ...