Major Questions Unasked About Tertiary Sector’s Odd Couple

​The future of the Accord and Australia’s universities and TAFEs remains uncertain while major questions about the funding and operation of the sector remain unasked – let alone unanswered.

Charles Sturt University (CSU) Vice-Chancellor Renée Leon called on the Government to learn from the sector and start to work through many of the practical issues that must be addressed if universities and TAFEs are to work more closely together to realise the goals of the Accord.

Almost 800 VET students will get 12 months credit and commence in the second year of a degree at CSU this year – building on decades of collaboration and credit recognition between the regional university at VET providers. However, Education Minister Jason Clare’s plans to expand this approach across the sector raises plenty of questions in practice.

Like the vast majority of sector leaders, Professor Leon welcomes the intent of the Accord to welcome an extra one million learners into the tertiary sector over the next 24 years, but is imploring Government and the new ATEC to learn from the experience of providers – and address a host of questions that as yet appear to be unasked.

“I want to encourage the Government to work with universities and TAFEs to look at the many issues involved in harmonisation and fulfilling the goals of the Accord,” Professor Leon said.

“We are ready to work with Government, ATEC, industry and our TAFE partners to strengthen a truly unified tertiary system.”

Key questions about the future of the sector that appear to be unanswered include:

1. If a much larger proportion of students at each university decide to save $10,000 by completing their first year of study as Fee-Free TAFE, what does that mean for university finances? What does it mean for State and Territory Government funding agreements for TAFE? “Anecdotally, my understanding is that many metropolitan universities are taking less than 5 per cent of students from a VET pathway. As a sector we need to understand if that figure is correct, through data from the Department of Education,” Professor Leon said. “If that is so, they will have considerable hesitation as to what it might mean for their base funding if they were to start encouraging students to do a fee free year of TAFE first.”
2. Will a growth in fee-free TAFE cannibalise first year university enrolments, or grow participation overall? “I think this is where the Department of Education, which must have access to large datasets that would enable them to do this analysis, should try to get some understanding as to what extent it will be cannibalising vs net widening participation. I haven’t seen any evidence they are using that data to do this work,” Professor Leon said.
3. If students save $10,000 on first year of a degree by going to TAFE instead, what does that mean for expectations around fees for second and third year university? “There doesn’t seem to have been though about costing implications beyond the election announcement of fee-free TAFE,” Professor Leon said. “We aren’t funded for the extra work and the additional student support it will take to really integrate with TAFE. We will need to do more joint activities – for example join open days and joint admission processes, which will need funding.”
4. Is there appetite for more universities and TAFEs to share campuses – reducing duplication? With greater collaboration, universities and TAFEs in many areas could agree to co-locate, freeing up campuses for housing or other uses, reducing costs and embedding harmonisation – but this would take sector-wide coordination, Professor Leon said. “If we are going to address duplication, we wouldn’t need duplicated facilities, we could do three way deals where you move a whole lot of TAFE courses fully onto the university campus, using facilities already there and you free up the TAFE campus for housing, there just needs to be a willingness to think laterally about that,” she said.
5. What is the plan for infrastructure growth? Professor Leon notes that Charles Sturt has excess demand for nursing enrolments, and the regions it serves require more nurses urgently, but the university cannot get additional places and does not have the $60 million required to develop a new nursing simulation facility, which would provide an opportunity for expansion. It would take decades if not centuries to save up the money for a new facility based on the margin on teaching nursing degrees – with no funding available outside this to grow education infrastructure to meet workforce need.

Professor Leon emphasised that universities were keen to collaborate to chart the course for change, but a wide range of implementation issues needed to be considered to move towards better collaboration between TAFE and universities.

With separate funding systems, Ministers, regulators and culture, there seemed little prospect of a merger between TAFE and universities, but considerable effort would be required to even achieve greater integration if wide-scale harmonisation is to be achieved, she said.