The long and winding reform road of Australia’s tertiary education and training system will soon have a new ‘wide-span archway’ overseeing traffic and through which almost all matters of tertiary reform will now travel. The new statutory advisory body, the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC), an outcome from the HE Accord Review and Government decisions, will impact mainly public universities and also the wider tertiary system.
It’s a good bet matters critical to university financial interests will be early, congested (and contested) traffic through the archway. Unpicking the Jobs Ready Graduate regime and allocating CSPs under Managed Growth Funding is predicted as complicated and opaque.
Sometime later a freshly re-sprayed omnibus now called ‘tertiary harmonisation’ should trundle through the archway. Much of this truckful has been on the reform road for well over a decade, with old cargo boxes like credit transfer, student pathways, regulatory reform plus a new cargo box – national ‘skills taxonomy’. Helpfully, there is a valuable Roadmap.
The purpose here is to disassemble the ‘harmonisation omnibus’ and to scrutinise selected harder-core components on their arrival at the ATEC policy warehouse, and to pin plain-speak briefing consignment notes (CNs) on each for ATEC’s early and ready use.
Tertiary Harmonisation or Integration or What?
The Tertiary Harmonisation Roadmap says ‘harmonisation’ is ‘about the strategic alignment between the VET and HE sectors’ and states it’s ‘not about merging or integrating’ them. This contradicts multiple use of ‘integration/ed’ (in this context) in the Accord’s Final report (>20x) with ‘harmonise/ation’ scoring zero. Even the Minister’s Press Council address states: “improving the integration of HE and VET …creating new …qualifications that combine both”.
The contradiction in ‘it was integration but now its harmonisation’ risks unnecessary policy obfuscation. Is it ‘better pathways’; or ‘unified wherever practical’; or ‘all providers run with a skills-curriculum at different levels’, or what? ‘Integration’ seems dumped as structurally too provocative. Never did it undermine HE/VET’s equally valued and complementary purposes.
Stepping over semantic cobblestones, ‘harmonisation’ is used for the Roadmap, the 2025/26 AG Budget papers and the budget explanatory ‘Tertiary Education Harmonisation Fact Sheet’.
‘Top Down’ Policy – Tertiary Harmonisation
The Roadmap sets out 19 Recommendations. It’s coherent and deliberately not definitive. Rather it seeks to draw together the multiple relevant threads essential to measured reform. Some 3 of its Recommendations best coincide with AG Budget initiatives.
So, what’s in the ‘harmonisation omnibus’? The Fact Sheet shows investment of $27.7m over 4 years out to 2027-28 (DEWR’s Portfolio Statement includes $12.2m, starting only in July 2026 pp.32). There are ‘six-funded-to-dos’, so what’s expected and why four years?
Three Well Worn Familiar ‘Cargo-Boxes’
- facilitate better student pathways between VET and higher education, including through updating the AQF Qualifications Pathways Policy, and
- develop a standard approach to credit recognition arrangements, making it cheaper and more efficient for students to become qualified
CN 1: The Harmonisation Fact Sheet is silent on reform of the AQF itself and refers only to updating the existing (2013) ‘AQF Qualifications Pathways Policy’ (AQF-QPP). The current version provides details on expected standards in ‘credit transfer/recognition’, this being reinforced by TEQSA and ASQA guidance notes.
There has long been challenge in clear definition and consistent application of a ‘standard approach’ to RPL and credit recognition, e.g. in cross mapping competencies and curriculum. But AQF-QPP policy tinkering won’t deliver a quantum leap in uptake, especially across sectors. Practitioners speak more often of ‘money’ than ‘mapping’.
Not only are there limited financial incentives for providers (it’s time and resource intensive) but there are also disincentives, especially in competitive enrolment markets. In theory its ‘cheaper and more efficient for students’, but in practice it erodes institutional revenues. Without a strong new student’s pipeline, institutions typically prefer full program enrolments.
- build better data by aligning VET and higher education data sets to better understand student pathways between the sectors…etc…
The key words are ‘understand pathways between sectors’ and ‘aligning data sets’.
CN 2: What in real world terms does tertiary harmonisation mean for the bulk of the nation’s Cert II/III VET students (~54% of VET enrolments) and its bachelor undergrads (~63% of HE)? Their combined achievements underpin national labour markets and anchor institutional (HE and VET) purpose. Many typically younger people (~18-30 years) will continue to pursue their preferred qualifications, reflecting their passions, educational preparation and abilities.
Here sits the risk of confusion in harmonisation’s overall objective as a collective of different initiatives. Like innovation policy design, critiqued as a ‘battle of conceptual vagueness’, harmonisation risks becoming rhetorically central to high policy narrative but nebulous to nail down its practical and impactful elements in effective priority order.
What might end-state success look like? One vision might be a “more flexibility tertiary system encompassing yet-to-be designed units of attainment (however named and of variable size) comprising knowledge, skills and application of graded complexity that can all be ‘Lego-assembled’. These are to be recognised and credited across remodelled providers, delivering just as needed new ‘skqals’, built to employer needs, so driving productivity in the new economy – all underpinned by a dynamic, applied skills taxonomy”. Utopia or implausible?
CN 3: A more graspable policy objective, with practical focus and building on what exists is ‘pathways between sectors’ – the long-standing need to rethink the overlap at AQF 5 and 6, i.e. diplomas, associate degrees, under grade-certificates etc. Commendably, the Roadmap identifies essential elements, steps and relationships to reform this junction, consistent with ideas set out in a prior JET sector model.
CN 4: Historically there has been little detailed tracking of learners on reciprocal ‘pathways between’ sectors. There is no comprehensive multi-year trend data. The VET National Data Asset (VNDA) indicates ~8% of all VET graduates pursued HE after completing their qualification, while ~16% enrolled in a higher-level VET qualification. This confirms earlier student mobility data estimated by other means ~8 years ago.
Students that wish to can find cross-sectoral pathways, but these modest numbers are not yet shrieking demand for ‘harmonisation’. Evidence is though needed to improve this option.
CN 5: Any HE/VET ‘data alignment’ would ideally be based on common data standards. It is unknown how well (or not) the new VET Information Standard to replace AVETMISS 8 ‘aligns’ with the current HE TCSI standards, or the proposed MortarCAPS Higher Learning Data Standard (MCDS), co-developed with CAUDIT. [USI in VET commenced 2015, in HE 2021].
These separate efforts to upgrade standards may prove to be ‘rails tracks’ of different or at least inconsistent gauge. This can be closely tested – plus considering one national data authority.
CN 6: At risk of excess reporting burden, there is a regulatory option. TEQSA/AQSA would be required to assess that not only do regulated institutions have policies in place for RPL and credit transfer, but also, it could be legislated that institutions must make annual statistical declarations on such numbers/outcomes both within and between registered institutions.
Two Announced and Already Being Actioned ‘Cargo Boxes’
- improve the regulatory approach for dual-sector providers, jointly led by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) and the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA)
CN 7: This is cargo padding; work is ongoing. At minimum the two authorities could be directed to merge all corporate functions, unify IT systems and staff development. The future would be one Board, plus elite Commissioners for two divisions in one entity. Make that three – an extra specific ‘research’ division to regulate ‘world standard’ research pertinent to retaining ‘university’ status, using long delayed replacement tools for ERA and EI, last run in 2018.
- Consider applications from TAFEs to become self-accrediting organisations in higher education, and exploring delegation of VET course accreditation to selected TAFEs.
CN 8: This too is padding. Announced a year ago, it is being positively progressed between selected TAFEs and regulators. Results may emerge via outputs of TAFE Centres of Excellence.
National data (2023) shows private RTOs have ~3x greater AQF 5 and above (VET Diplomas etc) enrolments than TAFEs. Quality p-RTOs may feel ‘privileged’ harmonisation is sector distortion.
One New and Future-looking ‘Cargo-Box’
- Commence work to develop a National Skills Taxonomy to make it easier to design higher education and VET qualifications that meet the needs of business and industry
CN 9: Meritorious progress has been made in considering a National Skills Taxonomy (NST), it being widely consulted, with summarised outcomes. Stakeholders were open minded but still grappling with understanding the objectives of any NST, its potentially multiple practical purposes and applications, its ideal structure and optimal degree of granularity, and its confusing cross relationship with numerous other local and international ‘skills taxonomies’.
Proponents make the argument that a NST builds a much needed ‘common use language’ for skills (old and new dialects are inevitable), and further, a NST is needed to be built preceding the development of new national qualifications, ‘to make it easier to design etc…see above’.
This seems credible from a policy pure standpoint. Alternately, sceptics might say it just confounds lost productivity and progress in long procrastinating with AQF reform.
CN 10: Step into a world view. Whilst the initiative is new to Australia, NST-like international approaches have decades long pedigree e.g. in the US and EU. Three examples suffice.
The USA O*Net system has evolved since inception in 1990, going public and on-line in 2000. It is aligned with the Dept Labour Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system, and incorporates insights from workers, job postings, and machine learning models.
Regular updates are made to occupational classifications, on average ~739 occupations are refreshed each year to stay abreast of current workforce trends. This requires surveys of workers, plus input from occupational experts. It includes many emerging fields such as green jobs, AI-related roles, and cybersecurity.
The European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations (ESCO) framework serves a similar purpose to O*NET in the EU. Its pilot version goes back to 2010. It now provides a structured classification of skills, occupations, and qualifications across EU countries, helping to align education and workforce development with labour market needs. It includes Occupational Classifications; Skills Mapping; and has been ‘cross walked’ with O*NET so improving international workforce comparisons, and facilitating job mobility across the EU.
Founded as Burning Glass in 1999, the now firm Lightcast is a private labour market analytics firm that offers real-time job market data, including employer demand, emerging skills, and regional workforce trends. Unlike O*NET that mostly relies on survey-based data, Lightcast aggregates job postings and employer demand in real time to provide dynamic insights. It has an established open skills taxonomy claimed as a universal standard for understanding occupations, titles and skills that has been mapped and compared with that of O*Net and also World Economic Form tools. It has covered Australasia since its inception.
Locally, for a decade or so, both governments and local educational institutions have had access and experience of tools like Lightcast. Institutions might use it to inform alignment of their curricula with labour market trends, so students develop skills that match industry demands. It’s an existing licensed tool making ‘it easier to design etc …see above’.
The conundrum is: do you build ground up a local NST or copy-in and catch up 25 years?
Treasury hard-heads should want to be fully convinced that any ‘own-built’ NST has whole of life benefits, plausibly measurable and convincingly greater than whole of life costs (both to build and kept current, close to real time) vs. existing and available alternates.
CN 11: Whilst a well-built NST tool may have multiple plausible applications, it’s ‘atomised’, and evolving skill-elements won’t of itself deliver ‘harmonisation’. The real test is its extensive application, evidenced by its nation-wide uptake and impact, at scale, e.g. directly informing design and content of HE and VET quals. Or risk it just sitting on a vaunted policy pedestal.
Universities are all acutely aware of building desired industry/employer skills into their courses. Being self-accrediting, unless legislatively compelled to use the NST (it’s unenforceable), it becomes only one artifact used to supplement existing intelligence and tools, like Lightcast.
Academic Boards approving courses have multiple inputs. They won’t reject new or revised courses for not being underpinned by a NST – they might but don’t have to use it. But they may well object to courses that don’t meet industry-informed professional accreditation standards in say e.g. accounting, nursing, education, medicine, engineering, veterinary, dentistry etc.
CN 12: The NST may have niche merit in helping translate the worlds of training package (TP) competencies and HE curriculum; a bridge across AQF 5-6. It’s also conceivable that a well-designed NST, with consistent common use terms, will be useful in building new skills into TPs where its ‘atomised’ skill elements might be aggregated into ‘molecular level’ competencies.
But would a local built NSC give any more informed ‘atomised skills’ refinements and benefits beyond that of existing intelligence tools, and at what level of international comparability?
Whilst competency based training has many merits, in say trades, it would be especially retrogressive if the NST just re-encouraged prescription of extra inputs, qualification rigidity, unnecessary proliferation and reinforced isolated and non-transferable competencies.
Employers don’t hire on ‘atomised’ skills. They seek keen staff with an adroit mindset able to flexibly apply skills and knowledge, showing smarts and resilience to fast learn new tasks and solve problems never ‘trained on’. Transferable skills are best hedge in a changing workplace.
‘Cargo-Boxes’ Excluded, Gone Missing or Coming Later
CN 13: Given the eclectic mix of the ‘harmonisation cargo’, the absence of the ‘Skills Passport’ (SP) initiative for learner-travellers, scoped from the ‘Working Future – White Paper’, is curious. DEWR’s 2025/26 Portfolio budget pp.32, has SP expenditure for 2024/25 but zero thereafter.
Perhaps it’s coming later; perhaps never. The SP’s potential was touted as making it “easier for employees to demonstrate their skills, change jobs and upskill, while making it simpler for employers to hire new staff with the skills and qualifications they need”. Perhaps there were doubts on its impact, uptake and costs that make its benefits marginal, especially with its functionality part duplicated by institutional offers e.g. My eQuals.
With no explanation, the same DEWR pp.32 also shows the demise of the National Careers Institute (NCI), with no budget beyond 2024/25. Perhaps it failed on costs vs national impact.
‘Bottom-Up’ Action – Tertiary Integration
The Harmonisation Fact Sheet says its data initiative will “inform future measures to continue to address the invisible barriers between VET and higher education”. Invisible!? Not that much is hidden if you determinedly ask institutions, jurisdictions and gather ‘in-practice evidence’.
CN 14: Make a comprehensive study of nationally existing ‘tertiary integration’ practices, detailing in depth the many case examples, so rigorously evaluating and researching innovative best practice. Then consider how best to proceed with Harmonisation items (a-c above).
This is what the headline ‘harmonisation’ initiative should have been – ‘get out and find out’. The Tertiary Harmonised Roadmap does provide three indicative and known Case Studies but its coverage is perfunctory; as a road-map this was not its purpose. To kick things off, here are some ‘cargo-canvased’ ideas and limited examples. There are swathes more.
CN 15: Many tertiary institutions negotiate and agree recognition and credit transfer options, widely advertising these in their marketing to students. These data can be comprehensively captured across all providers to find out why and how they were setup, by academic deans and education managers, and to check which pathways are actively used and why.
A potential resource is the State-established tertiary admission centres, e.g. like UAC, SATAC, QTAC , who promote pathway opportunities to students. It’s where pathways connect in multiple different ways. De-identified data would allow analysis of applicants’ current qualifications, course preferences and offers – beyond the common example of school to uni.
It is an untapped source of rich multiyear data that would allow direct analysis of different inter-institutional credit transfer arrangements and, for example, designed dual offers i.e. a VET diploma with a ‘success based’ guaranteed place in HE, seen in both intra-institutional dual-sector and between institutions e.g. Flinders Uni/TAFE SA courses in creative arts.
CN 16: There is already well founded research on the challenges of integrating ‘best of both worlds’ in VET/HE qualifications, guides to credit pathways, and examples of successful mapping when HE and VET institutions merge. There are existing compendia of VET to HE pathway stories, setting out what students are choosing.
CN17: States have made institutional reforms. The clue is in the report’s title: “In the same sentence: Bringing higher and vocational education together" which led to the NSW Institute of Applied Technology and its model of industry, TAFE and higher education collaboration.
Plus, qualifications reform. Having not referred constitutional power to the Commonwealth for the declaration of apprenticeships, States have been able to push ahead with e.g. in Victoria a Mechanical Engineering Degree Apprenticeship, and in SA two examples of a Software Engineering Degree Apprenticeship and a Mechanical Engineering Degree Apprenticeship.
CN 18: Fields of education and disciplines are not one-size-fits all. Those like nursing and engineering, along with others, do have more managed integration pathways between sectors, overseen by their respective industry accreditation bodies.
Somewhat less obvious (when comparing AQF ranges 3-6 based on 2023 data) are Finance, Tech and Business (FTB) VET program enrolments. These bias towards AQF 5/6 (37% Diploma and above), compared with 14% at these levels for all other VET program enrolments. Cert IVs are likewise biased (35% vs 24%) but this flips at Cert III (FTB 26% vs 60% all others).
This suggests FTB occupations (especially tech/digital/cyber/AI etc, accounting) may have stronger opportunity to gain job/skill benefits from any well-structured tertiary integration.
CN 19: This is farfetched. A progressive self-accrediting institute may pitch a ‘whole of working life’ and ‘ultra-brand-loyalty offer’. This comes with a ‘digital-learner-world’ coupled with an institutional only ‘skills-passport/loyalty card’. It’s a composite tertiary integrated offer.
The reward is life-long access to designed units of attainment, of variable complexity and length, comprising knowledge, skills and application of graded complexity that can be ‘lego-assembled’. Now utopia, or still implausible? Provided it’s tolerable to public funding rules and regulatory approvals – this may be a future, all designed and done ‘bottom up’.
CN 20 – Cargo wrapper
- Get out and find out. Research all existing ‘bottom-up’ examples supporting practical integration of HE/VET sectors; these will richly inform any ‘top-down’ harmonisation.
- When informed, make changes that will make a difference at the overlaps of the two sectors. Unless the current AQF is radically reformed, the bulk of existing HE/VET programs and courses will for now mostly travel on. Sector overlap is first business.
- Most ‘cargo’ has been long traveling in ‘much talked about, must do, but never done’ containers. If this takes 4 more years, expect more jurisdictional innovation working towards tertiary-integrated skills partnerships with willing institutions and industry.
- It’s not the building of solutions centrally that matters; users might not come (e.g. the NCI, perhaps SP, a risk for NST). It’s whether solutions get used and have value coast-to-coast that makes national reform. Before you build, check if like things already exist.
- Initiatives without new funding or legislative heft creates the risk participants will do their own thing, unless they see new advantages beyond their existing capabilities.
- Initiatives only have chance of impacting on skills-led workforce productivity when good policy ideas combine with well-executed national implementation. Or risk ideas being parked in the cul-de-sac of the unused, stalled or abandoned.