Oz TAFE students: political ascendancy

Vocational education and training (VET), the perennial bridesmaid of Australian tertiary education, is stealing a march over a university sector that has long held most of the cards. There are signs that public vocational colleges are gaining political ascendency over a university sector seen as poorly governed and ill-suited to labour force realities.

Training minister Andrew Giles says the government’s promise to fund free technical and further education (TAFE) was a “key dividing line” between his Labour Party and the opposition in the lead-up to the May election. He says Labour had made free TAFE a “permanent feature” of the national VET system — “in fact, we locked it into law” — through the Free TAFE Act, which earmarks funding for 100,000 tuition-free training places per year.

“The jobs we need to fill are primarily those supported by vocational education and training pathways,” Giles told an apprentice employment conference on June 12. “Skills are at the core of every workforce challenge we face. In New South Wales, for example, more than 90 percent of the 400 occupations on the critical skills shortage list require only vocational qualifications. As someone who holds a law degree and a BA, I can say this: how many lawyers or history majors does it take to build a house?”

Giles told the Australian Financial Review that he favours a “50-50 split” between higher and vocational education. His office told Times Higher Education that this was the “dream scenario”, although the government had not set a “rigid” target.

The Universities Accord recommended two attainment targets for achievement by 2050: for 55 percent of 25- to 34-year-olds to have higher education degrees, and for 80 percent of working age people to have tertiary qualifications at apprenticeship level or above. But the government has only adopted the broader tertiary target.

The 55 percent target was not mentioned in Labour’s budget response to the accord and is rarely if ever cited by politicians, fuelling perceptions that the government has decided to prioritise VET over higher education.