Submission Number 183
Submission to the Review of Higher Education Financing and Policy
(the West Committee)
From the Academic Board of the
University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury
This submission is concerned primarily with the nature and status of professional
education in modern universities. It addresses the term of reference, under 'Scope of the
Review' which refers to
"teaching practice and course content in the context of changing undergraduate and
postgraduate students' needs and development in the knowledge base of disciplines".
It will attempt to contribute to the expectation, set out under 'The Review Committee's
Report', that the Committee's report
"will pay particular attention to the need to ensure that… the structure and
range of higher education courses meet the needs of students and industry [and that] the
interfaces between the higher education sector and the vocational education and schools
sectors operate efficiently and effectively."
One of the issues that the Committee has been grappling with, as indicated both by
comments of Committee members reported in the press, and by some of the discussions the
Committee has held during its recent series of visits to universities, is the relationship
between what may be called 'traditional' disciplines (exemplified by Philosophy,
Mathematics, and History) and some of the recently established professional disciplines
(such as Hospitality Management, Nursing and Accounting). Comments of the Chair, as
reported in the press, have reflected some bemusement about the teaching of Hospitality
disciplines in universities rather than in TAFE. Discussions with other university
representatives have, we understand, raised questions about the appropriate location for
the teaching of disciplines such as Nursing and Accountancy. Some of these discussions
have also raised, in fairly pointed form, questions about the relationship between
universities and TAFE, and the apparent overlap in the programs taught (at very different
funding levels) in the two sorts of institutions.
The Academic Board of the University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, felt that, in the
light of these comments and discussions, the greatest assistance it could offer the
Committee as it went about its deliberations might well be to try to clarify the status of
some of these disciplines. We seek to do this, not for the sake of correcting any alleged
misconceptions, but rather for the sake of setting out our positive conception of the
nature and the social and economic significance of knowledge in the professions. We
believe that UWS Hawkesbury may be uniquely well placed to offer such clarification. From
the time it was a CAE and before, UWS Hawkesbury (or Hawkesbury Agricultural College, as
it was known from its founding in 1891) has taken a leading role in developing and
refining a range of teaching and learning paradigms that fully engage the intellect and
creative imagination of its students. Its approach to teaching and learning has done much
to build its national and international reputation as a creative, interdisciplinary source
of ideas and solutions to problems of environmental management, environmental health,
rural development, and others.
UWS Hawkesbury is proud of its university programs in Nursing, Environmental Health,
Rural Development, Accounting, Hospitality Management, Building and Construction Sciences,
and a range of other areas of modern professional activity. It is also very proud of the
close relationship it has developed with TAFE, which has colleges co-located with UWS
Hawkesbury on both its campuses. It is able to work cooperatively with TAFE, and to share
facilities and develop programs linked with TAFE courses, precisely because it is
confident about the nature and level of its own teaching and how that teaching differs
fundamentally from the extremely valuable but conceptually more basic skills-based
learning properly emphasised by TAFE.
We can illustrate these differences, and outline UWS Hawkesbury's view of the nature
and level of university teaching, with a few examples from the Hawkesbury syllabus.
Hospitality and Tourism
In the general area of hospitality and tourism, UWS Hawkesbury offers a Bachelor of
Hospitality Management and a Bachelor of Applied Science (Environmental Management and
Tourism), as well as Masters degrees in both specialties. These courses are concerned with
the development of generic skills such as critical thinking, analytical problem solving,
integration of diverse sources of information, and developing confidence in students to
deal with complexity, change and conflict. These capacities are all put into context in a
variety of hospitality and tourism topic areas, to enable students to take leadership
roles and autonomous action in identifying issues, developing solutions, and evaluating
and recommending policy and practice in a variety of industry locations. TAFE teaching in
the area tends to be specific skills-based teaching, typically with an operational focus
on front office procedures, ticketing and booking procedures, food and beverage
management, etc. These skills are valuable ones, and at UWS Hawkesbury we have
experimented with making sure that students acquire these specific skills at TAFE either
before, or concurrently with, acquiring the more wide-ranging management capacities
emphasised in our degree courses. We do not teach the TAFE subjects, or incorporate them
into our degrees, but we recognise the important part they play in the development of
professional competence that extends from the very concrete and limited to the very
abstract and general.
Nursing
Nursing is taught at undergraduate and postgraduate degree course level at UWS
Hawkesbury. Throughout Australia, courses in nursing were converted to university level
training from hospital-based and diploma-based courses during the 1980s. The change in
level of training was clearly sparked by a professional perception of a change in the
roles of nurses, and has in turn sparked further changes in those roles. Traditional
training in nursing emphasised specific skills and competencies in the care of patients or
the evaluation of symptoms in discrete and particular contexts. Modern education
emphasises the open-ended role that nurses must play as community facilitators of health
education and health practice. Increasingly, the boundaries between nursing and primary
health care are becoming blurred as health care becomes more integrated into the everyday
life and institutions of the community. In consequence, nurses absolutely require the
developed capacity, emphasised in our nursing courses, to analyse, evaluate and respond to
health needs across a wide spectrum of social contexts, to deal with ambiguity and
complexity in their interaction with clients, to add reflective and analytic skills to
their traditional clinical ones. Economic and social changes in Australian society require
them to work with increasing independence from medical practitioners, and the heightened
professional challenge and status that have resulted have been generally welcomed within
the profession.
Building and Construction
Building and construction are typical 'trades' areas in which TAFE training has long
been the standard qualification. Nevertheless, they also constitute one of the clearest
cases for the need for university education that goes systematically beyond the training
provided by TAFE. Graduates of the TAFE Diploma of Building may effectively work as a site
foreman, site manager, or construction manager in a small to medium size building firm.
The technical skills learned in the Diploma course are extremely valuable and practical.
Beyond such skills, however, UWS Hawkesbury's Bachelor of Building course seeks to develop
in the student:
As in the previous cases, the university level education goes beyond the TAFE level
training in enabling the graduate to deal better with complexity and ambiguity, and to
take more initiative in defining problem situations and developing flexible and often
creative solutions to them. The common core to these three examples, and to all our
professional education, is to help the student to develop high level skills in
communication, problem solving and critical analysis, in the specific context of the
professional area and the wider context of Australian society in general.
V. The Students' View
There is evidence from a number of sources that our students understand the nature of
the education we try to make available to them, and that they consider it effective. The
evidence which draws on the widest sample of student opinion is the Course Experience
Questionnaire, conducted by the Graduate Careers Council of Australia and given to all
graduating students. The responses to the 1996 questionnaire show that, across all courses
at UWS Hawkesbury, departing Hawkesbury students expressed very high agreement with
statements that reflect an autonomous, problem-centred, analytic approach to education in
their courses, such as:
The course developed my problem solving skills.
The course sharpened my analytic skills.
As a result of my course, I feel confident about tackling unfamiliar problems.
Conversely, they disagreed most strongly with statements that reflected a narrowly
pedantic, just-the-facts approach, such as:
To do well in this course all you really needed was a good memory.
Too many staff asked me questions just about facts.
The students' responses do not simply reflect a high opinion of Hawkesbury courses
generally. Their very strong agreement was restricted to statements that reflected the
characteristics of university education which we emphasise most strongly at UWS
Hawkesbury. There were many statements that clearly related to the perceived quality of
the course, but which did not focus on these characteristics. Students tended to agree,
but not nearly so strongly, with statements of this sort, such as:
My lecturers were extremely good at explaining things.
The staff put a lot of time into commenting on my work.
The principles underlying the Hawkesbury approach to education in professional areas
may be stated simply:
These bold claims may suggest that UWS Hawkesbury is being offered as the exemplar of a
modern university. While we value diversity in the tertiary sector far too much to make
such a claim, we do maintain that the production of graduates able to deal with the
industrial and social demands of a knowledge-based economy (and a base of rapidly shifting
and unstable knowledge at that) must be a central function of universities in the coming
century; and that UWS Hawkesbury is closely focused on that function. While we claim no
status as an exemplar, therefore, we do believe that universities such as UWS Hawkesbury
will come increasingly to characterise the mainstream.
Comments to:
Professor Brian Mackenzie
Chair of the Academic Board
University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury
Locked Bag 1, Richmond, N.S.W. 2753.
e-mail B.Mackenzie@uws.edu.au