News Article

Reform is afoot in tertiary education. Greater access to diplomas and degrees for the Australian people is proposed. There is significant federal investment in the operations and infrastructure of public institutions under way. There is talk of government funding tied to performance in education and research. A new system for assessing research quality, Excellence in Research for Australia, is being implemented. Reforms to the standards required for educational institutions teaching international students are in draft legislation.

The Australian Qualifications Framework is being revised for 2011, and a new regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, is being designed to set registration standards and assure quality. It is proposed as the single national regulator for higher and vocational education in Australia by 2013.

Much of this change is happening ahead of any sustained debate about the institutional arrangements for higher education, whether these reforms could be accommodated by adapting existing arrangements or whether more substantial change is needed.

The debate about whether change should occur to existing arrangements is yet to be advanced. Should tertiary education in Australia be different in substantial ways from what currently exists?

There are three issues to be resolved..

The first is to what extent Australia will retain the current divide between the higher education and vocational education and training sectors.

The second is whether we should continue to make distinctions between self-accrediting and non self-accrediting institutions.

And the third is how we will frame the link between institutional capacity and the right to offer particular qualifications.

TEQSA needs answers to these questions before it can set the standards to assess new entrants and established institutions.

Australian institutions in higher education (principally but not exclusively universities) and those in VET develop educational programs with different curriculums, pedagogy and assessment; different types of academic policies and governance processes; different expectations of the qualifications and activities of staff; different preparation expected of students; and differences in the facilities and services typically provided.

In the past decade there has been rapid growth in the number of private providers. We have about 189 government providers and over 5000 non-government. While some are in higher education and others in the VET sector, many offer qualifications in both sectors. Some TAFE institutes are approved to offer undergraduate degrees and thus sit alongside the small number of public universities that operate in higher and vocational education.

To add complexity, many universities have concluded agreements with domestic VET providers in which the vocational provider offers part of particular undergraduate degrees.

At least one university allows private providers without university status to offer masters degrees on its behalf.

So the two sectors that divided tertiary education in the 1990s are blurring. Given current rates of change, these transformations could go from the margin to the centre of the system without any policy consideration of whether there are important differences between higher education and VET education to be preserved.

The second major divide is between self-accrediting and non self-accrediting institutions. Only universities and three higher education institutes are permitted to accredit their own qualifications. Other educational providers must seek accreditation for each qualification they provide. A self-accrediting institution can, in theory, offer any tertiary qualification it chooses, although the AQTF restricts providers of national training packages (that is, the nationally accredited vocational education curriculum) to registered training organisations.

For VET, national training packages are prescribed for public and private providers. For higher education, degrees not offered through universities are subject to separate accreditation processes.

There are 207 private providers and public TAFE Institutes offering undergraduate degrees that have been accredited in this way. In other words, non self-accrediting institutions have a right to apply to offer any tertiary qualification, but must apply for the ability to offer each separate program, which is registered normally for a period of five years.

There is one area where the distinction between self-accrediting and non self-accrediting is irrelevant -- the requirements placed on all institutions that wish to offer education to international students through the Education for Overseas Students Act. Here each institution must satisfy a number of criteria for CRICOS registration, including specifying the maximum number of international students to be taught, and in which programs.

Australian universities have been able to determine the qualifications they offer since their foundation. It is based on the autonomy of universities and the assumption that a university not only transmits but creates knowledge. As a creator of knowledge a university is deemed to have the capacity to determine the nature of its own knowledge transmission.

In practice the distinction between accrediting and non self-accrediting institutions has been blurred by legislation that imposes the same standards on all institutions wishing to teach international students. And it is also qualified by the fact that in a number of professional domains, the recognition of some degrees relies on accreditation by the relevant professional body, such as Engineers Australia or the Australian Medical Council.

The third issue underpins the first two. Distinctions between sectors and between those institutions that can accredit their own qualifications and those that cannot, rest on the idea that institutional capacity dictates the type of qualification provided.

In Britain, further education is separate from higher education, which is principally carried out in universities. Further education colleges offer diplomas and sub-degree courses that may constitute the first years of an undergraduate degree. Community colleges in Canada are separate from universities and offer a range of subdegree courses and a few offer bachelor degrees, while community colleges in the US also offer preparatory and sub-degree or short associate degrees and some also offer bachelor degrees. In the US, distinctions are made also between doctoral granting institutions and those not accredited to offer research degrees.

In most countries there are distinctions between institutions in their capacity to offer particular types of qualification. And in many countries the distinction is between institutions that offer qualifications that are seen as preparatory to a professional qualification or non-professional qualifications, and those that offer degrees leading to professional and-or research qualifications.

Institutional capacity is clearly the foundation of any system; it is the basis on which we trust that quality education will be provided.

The staff, facilities, policies and processes necessary to deliver a certificate in hospitality are not the same as those required for a diploma in business management, nor as those for an undergraduate degree in engineering or a PhD in neuroscience. Institutional capacity must vary with level and type of qualification.

The AQF outlines the different requirements for tertiary education qualifications. Current proposals for reform of the AQF create a single hierarchy of qualifications, removing the tight link between particular sectors and types of qualification that mark the current system. This policy change leaves open the questions of capacity, sector and self-accreditation status of Australian educational institutions.

This makes more significant the structural reform under way to reshape and replace existing federal and state accreditation and registration systems and quality assurance regimes. A major requirement for TEQSA is to set the registration standards for tertiary educational institutions. These standards must relate to the qualifications offered. Our new regulator must have a framework to determine and assess institutional capacity to offer different types of qualification.

At present, Australian qualifications are spread across institutions that are a mix of private and public providers, subject to multiple regulatory and quality assurance regimes and split across state and federal jurisdictions. There are requirements that must be met to offer education to international students that are audited separately and against different standards from those that pertain for domestic students.

There are separate state accreditation and registration processes for private providers and non self-accrediting institutions, albeit against national protocols and frameworks. Quality assurance regimes for vocational and higher education are different in form.

Tertiary education in Australia has been growing and reshaping itself organically. The education sectors morph and flow, responding to the forces of competition and regulation. By default rather than by design, tertiary education in Australia has been evolving as if it is not important what types of institution deliver a particular type of qualification. While the title of university and the expectations of universities are separated from others, different types of educational institution with different capacities are able to offer the same qualification.

This may be the outcome we desire. However, we have not yet explicitly made this policy choice. If there are important differences between vocational and higher education, as has been asserted in the design and processes of universities and TAFEs, then they must mean different institutional capacity is necessary to offer degrees compared to national training packages. Is this different institutional capacity worth identifying and preserving?

If the knowledge creation capacity of universities is central to their ability to accredit their own qualifications, should this capacity be acknowledged and preserved in the way standards for registration are formulated?

Or do we wish to have a single tertiary education system offering a range of qualifications in which any single institution can be positioned across all or parts of the spectrum?

Our practice offers a qualified yes to each question. Sometimes sector matters, sometimes the ability to self-accredit matters, sometimes every institution is assessed by the same standards.

We must do better or we will have more of the nonsensical arguments currently abroad that the degrees offered by TAFE institutes are somehow different in kind to those offered by universities. Does different in kind mean a different standard is applied to how they are taught and with what staff and facilities? If this is where our practice is leading us it will undermine the quality of higher education qualifications.

TEQSA has an opportunity to make a policy choice. If there are different institutional capacities necessary to offer different types of qualification, then let us specify what they are.

And let us be clear that institutional standards are the foundation on which a new tertiary education framework must rest.

Source: The Australian