Transcript 

Today I am releasing the sixth formal discussion paper to inform the debate of Higher Education Reform for Australia. In addition to the six discussion papers there has also been a monograph on Indigenous participation in Australian higher education. Today’s paper is entitled "Varieties of Learning" and what this paper does is look specifically at the arrangements which exist between TAFE, Vocational Education and Training and Australian Universities. There were for example last year 15,300 Australians who applied for entry into higher education who had come from the TAFE sector. That represents around seven percent of those applying for university entrance and that seven percent compares with 3.9 percent application rate in 1993. Of the 15,300 who were applying for university entrance, 5,180 had in fact been given credit for the TAFE education and training qualifications which they had received. So in other words there were more than 5,000 people entering university who were given credit for the education and training they had already achieved in the TAFE sector.

In contrast we had 15,000 applying for university entrance who had been through TAFE, a third of them being given credit for some of their TAFE training, but in contrast 84,000 university graduates were going into TAFE. So having received a university education they were then specifically looking for a skills based training which would might better equip them for the work force. One of the challenges that faces us in Australian higher education, post secondary education is how can we better formalise and recognise the articulation arrangements which exist between Australian TAFE’s and Australian universities. We are also in a situation where students can undertake a TAFE course then quite rightly receive credit for having done that TAFE course when they go to university and effectively achieve a university degree and education more cheaply than can a student who might spend all of their time in university. For example, a student who enrols in the Holmesglen Institute of TAFE in Victoria can undertake their first year in their diploma of computing and then in passing all of those subjects articulate to Monash University and do another two years of a Bachelor of Computing, graduate from Monash University having paid some $4,700 less for their university degree than the student who enrolled at Monash in the first year. So in other words there are a number of students who are receiving a university degree more cheaply and using TAFE as an opportunity to do so.

The issues which we consider in the "Varieties of Learning" paper, the paper examining the relationship between TAFE and the universities is - should we have more formal articulation arrangements for that sector, for those especially who are using TAFE as a way of specifically going to university should we be applying on to those students a funding model which we would generally apply to the university sector itself.

There are a number of issues which are covered in the TAFE higher education paper which I think are important for Australians to understand. In the university sector for example two-thirds of the students study full-time. In TAFE where there are 1.3 million students enrolled, only ten percent are studying full-time. Fifteen percent of university students come from the poorest socio-economic status suburbs in Australia whereas for TAFE twenty-six percent, just over a quarter come from the poorest socio-economic status suburbs in the country and in the university sector nineteen percent of students come from rural and isolated parts of Australia whereas more than one-third of the TAFE students are from rural and isolated areas of Australia.

There are 84 private higher education providers in Australia, yet four and a half thousand private vocational education and training providers. So there are marked differences between the sector in the TAFE sector for example last year we had 46,000 people who applied for a place in TAFE but were not able to achieve it and whilst that level of unmet demand had declined from 54,000 from the year before, 46,000 people represent unmet demand in the TAFE sector whereas for universities it is somewhere between ten and a half thousand and seventeen and a half thousand. So what this does now is this represents the release of the final discussion paper, the date for submissions to be received is the 13^th of September and we have already received close to four hundred submissions from organisations, institutions and individuals. I had another meeting with my Higher Education Reference Group last week, I will be expecting to receive a draft report from the Productivity Commission next month, which is examining the way in which universities are funded and administered in other countries and I have been discussing these matters with the Secretary of my department and we are now fully engaged in the process of consultation throughout the country to meet with specific groups and individuals to discuss the policy options that lie ahead of us in higher education.

Minister, how many students do you believe are using TAFE to obtain a cheaper education?

Well that is very difficult to ascertain. We know that as I say 5,180 students went to university last year and were given recognition for the TAFE training education that they had already done. How many of those students had enrolled in TAFE specifically with a view to receiving a cheaper university education we do not yet know. But one of the things that we want the TAFE sector, the higher education sector and Australians generally to consider is should we in some way be formalising those articulation arrangements with greater national consistency? Should we have an arrangement which effectively enforces all universities to meaningfully address the recognition which they should provide to TAFE qualifications and so that is the purpose of the discussion.

Are you hoping to cut off that opportunity for people?

The last thing that we want to do is in fact, diminish the closeness of the relationship between TAFE and Australian universities. What we are interested though in looking at is to seeing whether we should more uniformly and consistently apply those articulation arrangements across the country. Some universities readily embrace and recognise TAFE graduates, other universities are not quite so enthusiastic in their recognition of TAFE. We have also got to ask ourselves if the numbers of students who are leaving TAFE to go onto university, and receiving credit for their TAFE training increases, is this in fact a way for some students receiving a back door university degree on the cheap.

JOURNALIST

Would you encourage Australian universities to offer more vocational education within the university?

Well, one of the things that is fundamentally important to us is that we have a high quality higher education sector. University education is fundamentally about the development and transmission of knowledge, passing the soul from one generation to the next. TAFE and vocational education training on the other hand is about developing and transmitting skills which are employer led, industry led and which are competency based. There is a fundamental difference between the very high quality product offered in the university sector and the TAFE sector. One thing which we should not be encouraging is the universities to think that they should be taking over the legitimate and important role of TAFES and similarly we do not want to see TAFES increasingly moving into the university area. What we want obviously is a close, nationally uniform and consistent articulation arrangement. The one thing that we do not want is [inaudible]. Universities offer an extremely good product which is recognised not only in Australia but also overseas, is evidenced by the fact that we have got about 120,000 overseas students studying with Australian universities. We also have a very good high quality TAFE product. I mean the reason why 84,000 university graduates went to TAFE having got a university degree is because having received a university education, they then said they wanted to go and benefit from a high quality TAFE product which can more appropriately provide me with the skills that I want for a particular job. We don’t want to see, and one thing I don’t want to see is universities feeling that they are being forced to move into the TAFE sector.

Dr Nelson do you think that there are some students at university who really should be in the TAFE sector?

NELSON

Well one of the problems, amongst the many issues that I have been setting out which are facing Australian higher education, are the attrition rates. We have got around 40 percent of students who enrol in universities who do not complete. One of those four will subsequently come back and do another course possibly in another institution but three don’t ever complete and most of those actually leave in the first year. One of the fundamental questions that we have to ask ourselves as a society is have we got people going to university who are not there because they really want to be there, but they are there because someone else wants them to be there. I think too often as a society and as parents we tell young people in all kinds of ways that university education, as important as it is, is in some way more important than education through TAFE or a traineeship or an apprenticeship. One thing, if we can make sure that all young people know that they have choices available to them, that those choices include not only university but TAFE, apprenticeships and traineeships and private vocational education and training providers, and that we as a society value young people who go to TAFE or do an apprenticeship as much as we do university education, then I think we will have much better human, social and educational outcomes. It concerns me that in an environment where we have somewhere between ten and seventeen thousand people eligible for university for last year who did not get a place, that we then have up to 40 percent of those who did get a place at university leaving where I think a few of them in their hearts feel that they would have been better suited to going to TAFE or indeed going to do an apprenticeship.

(inaudible) the idea of HECs (inaudible)

Well, firstly the government and I as the Minister are not considering HECS for TAFE. There are 1.3 million students who are undertaking a TAFE education at the moment. The Government is not contemplating HECS for TAFE. What the discussion paper does however look at, is should HECS and HECS arrangements be offered to those students who are undertaking TAFE courses that specifically articulate to university? Is it fair for example, that a student who enrols in a first year Bachelor of Computing at Monash University, meets a HECS debt of $5,200. The same student who enrols at the Holmesglen Institute of TAFE in a Diploma of Computing, pays $500. Having completed the first year of TAFE, that student then automatically articulates to Monash University second year Bachelor of Computing and has saved him or herself $4,700. Is that fair? What we are looking at in trying to stimulate public debate is not HECS for the TAFE sector but rather should we examine university style funding arrangements for those students specifically who articulate directly from TAFE to university?

It is going to be very hard to stop that argument there though. You have some TAFE students getting access to HECS, it will be very hard to say but only you guys going to university? Surely in a couple of year’s time if this is applied you will have a whole bunch of other TAFE students saying what about me?

NELSON

Well I think that most, the vast majority of students who are studying in the TAFE sector are not arguing for HECS, and in fact I think that they are quite opposed to it. One of the questions that faces us in post secondary education and in particular trying to lead national policy in this area is that we have got, as I say about 5,000 a year at the moment directly articulating to universities and it has been said to me that the really smart students are not going to university, but that the really smart students are actually going to TAFE for a year or two and then using their much more affordable TAFE education to get credit for university degrees which they then complete at half the cost of a student that goes straight to university. I think that it behaves us in terms of national educational leadership to actually look at that question and if additional funds did come into the system only for those students who go directly from TAFE to university, then my argument is that any additional revenues goes into TAFE.

If you are thinking about my university style funding (inaudible) that would be (inaudible)

I am glad you raise that because what has happened through the course of this review of Australian universities and post secondary education is there has been a debate at times quite emotional and politicised from some quarters about the extent to which we have private sector contributions and investment in higher education, student contributions and public contributions and if we in this particular paper, where we are looking at the relationship between TAFE and universities and specifically looking at that group of students who are going directly from TAFE to higher education, you are quite right. The Australian tax payer, the everyday person who struggle to feed their kids, their car loans and their mortgages, lends money to students for their education, whether it is in university or whether it is for those students who are going from TAFE to university, then there is a cost inherent to Australian government and the Australian tax payer in doing that. So in putting these issues into the public arena, and these are not government policy, what we are trying to do is looking at the issues that face Australian higher education and in this sense Australian TAFEs where they interact with Australian universities, what we are trying to do is to get people to look both the problems and what our possible policy responses might be.

So that would mean that TAFE students would be paying more?

Well, there are 1.3 million students who are in TAFE today. What we are looking at, at the moment is 5,000 potentially of 1.3 million students in the TAFE sector today, the government has no plans whatsoever to introduce HECS for those students. But there are a small number, about 5,000 who are going directly from TAFE to university, getting credit and recognition for the TAFE education that they have received and they are paying up to a half less for the university degree that they will get having used TAFE to get there.

So in terms of the question of fairness, is that fair? And that is the question that I put to the students, to the teachers in the TAFE and higher education sectors and to the Australian people. But for the 1.3 million people that are studying in TAFE, the government has absolutely no plans whatsoever, is not even contemplating any introduction of HECS at all. What we are specifically looking at as it says in the paper, are those students who are articulating directly from TAFE to university.

Is it fair to say then that the government is considering funding them on the same per head basis as funding universities? Significant increase for a small sector of people (inaudible), how do you manage that for a start?

Well if you read the paper, you will see that we walk through the different choices (interruption)

We haven’t but we … 

Yeh yeh I know. What the paper does is that it examines those different options, different choices that we might have and in the end it is not about applying, not about HECS, where the government lends the students money for all of the students in the TAFE sector. All we are doing is asking this question - increasingly as I have gone around the higher education sector and I have gone around speaking to people involved in TAFE, they have said to me – that the really smart students are not going straight to university, they have said they have got students that are coming here, that do one or two years here, pay $500 a year knowing that they will automatically get recognised to go to university and they will get a university degree for the half the price as that of the kids that went straight to uni and the question that I put to the Australian people – is that fair? And we are looking at some policy choices which might potentially address that but we are certainly not, this Government this year will provide $1.03 billion effectively to TAFE, about of a third of the funding to TAFE and we will continue to do that and we are not even contemplating any student charge.

OK but if they have to pay HECS then surely then its, government should seriously consider both students and you must fund those students at a higher level (inaudible).

NELSON

Well of course, if that policy option were to adopted, if the sector, if the University and the TAFE sectors essentially said to us – we think you have got a point – then obviously those students would be attracting more funds for TAFE. Let’s see what they think.

(inaudible) Productivity Commission report was looking into other countries funding of higher education, can you (inaudible)

Predominantly, Europe and North America and the Productivity Commission will not be providing me with direct recommendations but what I want them to do is a lot is said in Australia about the funding of Australian universities. At the moment students pay about a quarter of the cost of their education and Australian tax payers pay about three-quarters of the cost of doing a university course. A lot is said in this country about the levels of government funding of universities, private sector funding of universities and student contributions, so what I thought it would be an appropriate thing to do was to have the Productivity Commission to actually compare how Australia rates in terms of the amount of money that goes into universities, the different sources of funding, how we govern our universities, how we administer them, how we distribute the money within those universities. How does that compare with other countries? And as I say the Commission will not be providing me with recommendations but I just wanted a dispassionate factional analyse of how Australia compares with other countries in this regard.

Can I ask you (inaudible).

Well I am expecting to receive it in September and as soon as I possibly can make it public I will. I see no reason why it should not be.

(inaudible)

Oh of course and as I say, it is my intention I have said from the outset it will be a public document and as it ought to be. I have asked the Productivity Commission to lets have a look at the facts, I want to see how Australia compares and as I have said to the National Tertiary Education Union and students and others in Australian universities, I don’t that think that any of us, including the government should be concerned about putting some facts on the table.

You said you were keen for universities to take more seriously the idea of streamlining (inaudible).

Well ultimately it is a matter for the universities themselves as they already do, to decide for what they will give credit coming out of the TAFE sector, what sort of qualifications they will recognise. We are in a situation at the moment where some universities quite readily and positively recognise TAFE qualifications and training and we then we have got other universities where it is like pulling teeth to try and get them to even look at it and increasingly we are living in a country and I think whatever part of this country you are studying in, you ought to feel that there is some degree of national consistency in articulation and credit arrangements and what we have done is in this paper we have put up a number of models for looking at formalising the articulation arrangements and credit transfers between the TAFE and higher education sectors.

Thank you everyone.

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