Standing Committee on Employment, Education
and Workplace Relations
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Submission 48
Institutes of Technical and Further Education
Submission on Appropriate Roles
Michael White.
The main focus of this submission concerns the extent to which roles
of the TAFE institutes should overlap with those of the universities,
an issue which has become increasingly important for four reasons;
1. The cross-crediting arrangements that are now common between TAFE
institutions and universities;
2. Country connecting arrangements between regional TAFE institutions
and universities;
3. Cross-sectoral institutional amalgamations that have been promoted
since the Dawkins Report of 1987; and
4. Some pressures, also emanating from the Dawkins Report, to permit
a number of TAFE institutions (called Institutes of TAFE) to award degrees-
This submission deals with each of the above situations seriatim
1. Cross Crediting.
During the 1980s and 1990s official inquiries and reports
frequently criticised universities for a slow response to government initiatives
with respect to credit and advanced standing accorded TAFE studies. I
believe this criticism was often overstated, especially with respect to
the former institutes of technology and colleges of advanced education,
though perhaps more justified where the older universities were concerned.
Curtin University (formerly the W.A. Institute of Technology), for example,
has a long record of sympathetic treatment of credit for TAFE studies,
especially in management/business/accounfing, art/design/architecture,
library studies, social work, and engineering-
Government initiative favoured a nation-wide approach
to this process, which in my opinion was always going to strike trouble.
TAFE studies and qualifications even within one state could vary in standard
substantially, and it was invariably necessary to examine each case on
an individual basis. 'Me comparability was never a simple process, and
simplistic solutions based on hours of class contact and duration of study,
even of actual qualification (diploma, associate diploma, certificate)
were never realistic. They ignored quite major variations in academic
levels, theoretical orientation, staff quality and qualifications, entry
levels and standards of assessment. Where satisfactory arrangements have
been worked out, for example in the cases mentioned above, they have been
done with fall knowledge of local circumstances and institutional policies
and practices.
Bardsley's studies in the 1980s indicated the arrangements
worked satisfactorily for the numbers involved, but criticised a few academic
area (engineering in particular) for their reluctance to concede credit
and also suggested that cross crediting would become more important in
time as student enrolments in the TAFE sector increased.
TAFE enrolments, particularly Of full time students,
have indeed risen since about 1996, with
fewer secondary pupils competing for the standard matriculation-style
examinations and prefacing to compete for entry into TAFE courses of one
kind or other that on the fare of it
appeared more likely to have favourable employment outcomes.
Given these trends, there is every likelihood that demand for transfer
from TAFE to university degree courses will increase. The current arrangements,
in the circumstances, are capable of .. dealing adequately with the situation.
Objections to this conclusion might be framed in the
light of national vocational standards and qualifications under the Commonwealth-states
agreements that started with the work of the National Training Board and
now falls under the ANTA umbrella This objection is rejected for two reasons.
One is that the universities are not convinced that the competency-based
standards, assessment and curriculum arrangements in TAFE and training
are acceptable where comparability with university studies are concerned.
The other is that universities remain to be convinced that the elaborate
and bureaucratic procedures for accreditation of awards and staff involved
are actually reflected much at the institutional or workplace levels.
2. Country contracting-. TAFE and higher education.
The W.A.Institute of Technology (now Curtin University)
was one of the first Australian higher education institutions to cooperate
with the federal government in the introduction of contacted arrangements
with regional TAFE colleges to enable parts of degree courses to be delivered
(taught) at locations close to the students concerned- These have worked
flexibly, simply and successfully at Curtin in the fields of business/accounting/management,
nurse education and teacher education. If and where the demand is present,
procedures for extending the provisions are simple and quick to be applied.
In terms of future demand, we strongly hold the view
that dais arrangement is preferred to either establishment of new higher
education institutions in regional centres or the upgrading of TAFE Institutions
concerned to degree granting institutions in their own right Regional
CAES, now Universities have always had a tenuous existence,- lack academic
credibility and are very expensive to conduct Even branches of universities
in regional centres are inefficient responses to regional demands for
access to higher education.
Good examples in Western Australia are the School of
Mines-Kalgoorlie College merger (now a branch college of Curtin), where
the costs of conducting mining and engineering courses have been out of
all proportion to the benefits- Edith Cowan University confronts similar
difficulties with respect to its Bunbury campus.
The main problem has been that the federal and or state Governments have
never been prepared to accept financial responsibility for decisions to
create such institutions, most of which have been political in nature
rather than based on realistic educational grounds. It always made more
sense to establish such institutions along the lines of regional community
(TAFE) colleges that had a broad educational, training and community service
charter which could include contracted arrangements with one or other
of the higher education institutions in the state. In Kalgoorlie the rnerging,
of the School of Mines with the Community College would have been sufficient,
provided the higher level mining and engineering programs (staff and equipment)
had been transferred to the Bentley campus of WAIT. Instead, political
lobbying ensured that the combined institution ended up as a branch of
Curtin which is expensive to run without special supplementation from
the governments which forced the decision, inefficient where the allocation
of expensive resources to very few advanced level students is concerned,
and split important applied science departments (metallurgy, surveying,
engineering) into small and inefficient units where one significant department
at Bentley would have produced research and teaching units of national
quality. It is interesting to record that at the time the Chamber of Mines
in Western Australia opposed a move to bring the tertiary work of the
School of Mines to the Bentley campus of WAIT, it was itself relocating
to Perth (and not far from WAIT itself) because of all the same reasons
that WAIT was arguing for concentration of resources at Bentley. The forced
political decision to keep the higher level work going at Kalgoorlie was
an exercise of almost breathtaking hypocrisy. And the costs have come
out of the teaching budgets of departments located at Bentley.
The contracting arrangements arc particularly suited
to the Australian. environment where regional centres tend to have small
populations narrow industry bases and limited demand for higher education.
The TAFE level programs satisfy the training and vocational education
demands, and the contracting arrangements provide adequate responses to
particular demands that come and go with the trend of demand in such centres.
3. Cross-Sectoral Institutional Amalgamations
This submission does not favour such solutions, except
where they hall proved almost necessary to rectify legacies of poor planning
in earlier times. Victoria, and in particular Melbourne, provides classic
examples at the CAE level where at one time it was possible to enrol for
engineering degree courses in about eight institutions. Teacher education
was available on nearly every save comer. In the post Dawkins period,
it seemed that only by forcing draconian solutions was there going to
be any rationalisation achieved, (RMIT, of course, was always a special
case that was justified by its history and educational record.)
In other states, there are similar examples of inadequate
planning in the former advanced education sectors and especially where
teacher education is concerned. in Virtually all of them there have been
forced amalgamations of former teachers' colleges to-form CAEs and then
these, sometimes broadened by the addition of social welfare and business
programs, were upgraded to university status after 1988. 'Me former institutes
of technology were all viable institutions with comprehensive academic-professional
programs and large enrolments dud made relatively painless their transition
to university status-
To compound these earlier efforts by forcing mergers
between TAFE institutes or senior colleges and former CAEs would not be
sensible from a public policy viewpoint 'Me TAFE colleges have an important
role to perform in the training and lower level vocational education fields,
and one Bud has yet to realise its potential.. Much needs to be achieved
in this sector before many of the institutions can claim any special eminence
in their local, regional and state communities, It would be highly desirable,
however, to encourage transfer arrangements for students wanting to move
from TAFE into higher education through existing channels that are tested
and now working fairly well.
4. Degree awards in TAFE Institutes.
From the preceding paragraph, it is obvious that this submission does
not recommend this course of action. It took nearly twenty years for the
former institutes of technology to gain sufficient standing in local industry
and professional circles that their degree awards w= widely accepted in
Australia and overseas. For the most part, these institutions now command
this level of respect, and they all provide substantial research and development
opportunities that also bear comparison with standard programs among the
older universities. They all commenced operation, moreover, from a base
of tertiary level technical and professional courses they had been separated
in the 1950s and 1960s from the ruck of TAFE colleges and schools.
Existing TAFE institutions are not even as well prepared as these former
institutes were in the 1960s for transformation into degree granting institutions.
it might even be argued that since .the introduction of competency based
approaches to their higher level courses the TAFE institutions are even
further removed from the academic environment in winch degree programs
are typically conducted.
The solution to demand from TAFE graduates for degree
awards is for them to transfer into well established degree programs in
institutions that have the history, experience and resources to mount
them with credibility. The transfer process, of course, could be improved
where this is found desirable. If on the other hand, a political decision
is to dictate the addition of degree awards to those at certificate and
diploma levels in a TAFE college, the long-standing practice in this country
and overseas is for the ward to be granted under the umbrella of a well
established and respected degree granting institution, usually of course
a major university.
Concluding observations.
The intent of this submission has been to strengthen
the bases of existing and proven arrangements for transfer between the
TAFE and university sectors, rather than to sanction the emergence, at
considerable expense to the public purse, of yet another level of degree-granting
institutions in the TAFE sector. There is a question here of maintaining
the credibility of Australian degrees in the international academic community,
as well as in the context of international comparisons (for example made
by fee-paying overseas students considering enrolment in Australian higher
education). An "open, competitive market" in this field is something
of a misnomer, since even within the university sector there is a peck
order among institutions that is well understood in the Australian and
international communities. In present circumstances in Australia (falling
value of Asian currencies, perceptions of racism in Australia and doubts
about the continuing viability of many Australian university programs)
it would be folly to introduce yet another rung in the degree status hierarchy,
and one that will struggle to attain any credibility at all in the foreseeable
future. It might be argued, moreover, though this goes weft beyond the
scope of this submission, that unless the gradual slide in Australian
university standards and finances is halted, the existing university institutions
are going to find it harder to retain their existing levels of credibility.
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