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Call for ‘professional universities’ to overcome skills mismatch

All chiefs and no workers in Australia’s over-credentialled labour force, says new thinktank

八月 5, 2019
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Australia’s public vocational education and training (VET) colleges should convert into “professional universities” to combat workforce saturation by overqualified theorists, according to a new thinktank.

The Mackenzie Institute says Australia’s economy has become “hollowed out” by a misguided insistence that universities must be research intensive, and policies that advantage higher education over vocational alternatives.

In a paper coinciding with its launch, the institute condemns the 2008 Bradley review – which spawned Australia’s recently abandoned demand-driven system of higher education funding – for producing a glut of graduates and exacerbating the funding decline in vocational training, particularly among public technical and further education colleges.

The paper blames the Bradley review for cultivating one of the worst skills mismatch profiles in the world. It cites figures showing that Australia ranks sixth among 33 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development nations for “high skills” development, but 27th for technical skills.

The institute says that, irrespective of whether jobs require higher credentials, employers use them to gauge people’s potential. “They act as a sorting system that signifies staying power and resilience,” says the paper by the institute’s leader, Bruce Mackenzie, a long-serving former chief of Victoria’s Holmesglen Institute.

“Australia has never had more graduates than now, yet we have a sluggish economy, stagnant wage movement and low productivity. Many of the occupations that provide low return to graduates would once have been taught in VET with better outcomes, and at a much lower cost.”

Mr Mackenzie said Australia’s “disappointingly uniform” universities did not cater to vocational students – many of them mature-aged people who wanted to study part-time – with only about one in 10 university students coming from colleges, and half of these dropping out.

He advocated the establishment of six new applied or “professional” universities, ideally formed from large technical and further education institutions. They would offer both vocational and undergraduate qualifications in the fields they taught, focusing on areas of industry need.

The new institutions would provide “short cycle” degrees typically over two years, embellished with considerable practical work, and would receive government funding only for qualifications up to bachelor’s level. They could offer master’s courses and conduct research, but without funding.

Citing California sociologist Martin Trow, Mr Mackenzie said a widespread desire for university qualifications meant that institutions without the “university” title inevitably struggled to attract students. He said demand for higher education was driven not by national economic needs or industry demand, but “the rise of the middle class”.

“They want to make sure that their children have access to a university, whatever that happens to be,” he said.

Mr Mackenzie’s proposals go further than those of his former charge Holmesglen, which has proposed relaxation of Australian rules to allow degree-teaching institutions that conduct applied research to call themselves “university colleges”.

He claimed that the teaching-research nexus was “hocus-pocus”. “There has never been evidence that students from teaching-only universities have inferior degrees to those from research institutions,” his paper says.

“While a lot of universities are inept in their research endeavours, because they carry the title university they are compelled – at great expense to the taxpayer – to continue to conduct research.”

Mr Mackenzie said Australian tertiary education resembled that of Middle Eastern countries. “Everybody’s doing a degree, and you’ve got a weak, insipid VET system,” he said.

“We went into this idea that everybody has to have a degree, and we neglected everything else.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com

后记

Print headline: Paper calls for ‘professional universities’ to close skills gaps

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Reader's comments (4)

This has already been done in the late 1980s when Technical and Further Education Colleges became Universities, resulting in more students gaining University Degrees. To achieve this the new universities had to upskill their current staff, and with an increase in student numbers the standards set for graduation had to be lowered. The result was that Australia had an exponential increase in University graduates whose IQ was lower than previous graduates, resulting in a significant number of graduates having fewer skills and less knowledge in their chosen career.
Earlier comment is half right - it was primarily the conversion of Colleges of Advanced Education and Techers Colleges to Universities - though many were absorbed into Universities. What I find mildly hilarious is that no one has questioned the bona fides of the Mackenzie Institute which is teaching a proprietry form of diagnosis and therapy. I have no idea whether this is a legitimate variety of physiotherapy, or is mere quackery. The real question in context is to what extent has the efficacy of the treatment been exposed to research rigour. THE needs to offer more than 'churnalism' (the reguritation of a press release as news) and practice journalism which involves undertaking secondary research about the topic. So in this case maybe ask about what the Mackenzie Institute teaches, ask a University or two about their thoughts. If you don't have time for that put the release on the spike. (And that is what you would get taught in a journalism course even if it had been from a CAE in the 80s).
There was no press release and the Mackenzie Institute is a thinktank, not a teaching institution. But as a longstanding institute director and a pioneer of TAFE-delivered higher education, Mr Mackenzie is well qualified to offer his insights about tertiary education.
I find it peculiar that Mr MacKenzie makes no mention of the destruction of the vocational training sector that has followed from the privatisation of TAFE: billions of dollars ripped from the system by fraudulent operators, student debt for vocational studies doubling in 3 years (2012-2015), closures of regional campuses etc etc. It's also untrue to say that universities do not cater for technical skills. Australian engineers are highly sought after: engineering is a highly technical program, and there are strong pathways via vocational education, and sub-degrees offered at universities. The regional/non G8 universities in particular provide very well for mature age students...and tradies wishing to 'get off the tools' are a large market segment for some universities, who do an excellent job in helping them learn the academic skills necessary for success. He cites a American researcher who died before the Bradley Review was even conducted, and that review was over a decade ago. I would love to see some reference to the many reports into Australian universities and education that have been done in the last few years. I think there's some merit to the argument for making it possible for institutions to have more teaching only staff but his views appear to be more focused on supporting the government's anti-university rhetoric than making a serious case about educational reform.
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