Tertiary education in Australia

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Tertiary or higher education in Australia is made up of universities and other higher education institutions (called higher education providers).[2]

A higher education provider is a body that is established or recognised by or under the law of the Commonwealth, or a State or Territory. The provider has to be approved by the Australian Government before it can receive grants or its students can receive assistance from the Australian Government under the Higher Education Support Act 2003 (HESA). Providers are subject to quality and accountability requirements.

A higher education provider is either a:

  • university
  • self-accrediting provider, or
  • non self-accrediting provider.

In 2007, the Australian higher education system consisted of:

  • 39 universities of which 37 are public institutions and 2 are private;
  • 1 Australian branch of an overseas university;
  • 4 other self-accrediting higher education institutions; and
  • non-self-accrediting higher education providers accredited by State and Territory authorities, numbering more than 150 as listed on State and Territory registers. These include several that are registered in more than one State and Territory.

The non-self-accrediting higher education providers form a very diverse group of specialised, mainly private, providers that range in size and include theological colleges and other providers that offer courses in areas such as business, information technology, natural therapies, hospitality, health, law and accounting.

Contents

[edit] Australian universities

There were 39 recognised universities in Australia in 2007, of which 37 were public institutions and 2 are private. For a list of all universities in the Australian university system , both public and private, see the article List of universities in Australia.

These universities are represented through the national universities' lobbying body Universities Australia (previously called Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee). Eight universities in the list have grouped themselves together, in recognition of their perceived status and/or history, and classify themselves as the ‘Group of Eight (Australian universities)’ or ‘G8’. Other university networks also exist with less prominence (e.g., the Australian Technology Network of Universities; the Innovative Research Universities - Australia group).

[edit] Allocation of responsibilities

The Commonwealth has the primary responsibility for public funding of higher education.

Commonwealth funding support for higher education is provided largely through:

  • the Commonwealth Grant Scheme which provides for a specified number of Commonwealth supported places each year;
  • the Higher Education Loan Programme (HELP) arrangements providing financial assistance to students;
  • the Commonwealth scholarships; and
  • a range of grants for specific purposes including quality, learning and teaching, research and research training programmes.

The Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST) administers Commonwealth funding and develops and administers higher education policy and programs.

Decision-making, regulation and governance for higher education are shared among the Commonwealth, the State and Territory Governments and the institutions themselves.

By definition within Australia, universities are self-accrediting institutions and each university has its own establishment legislation (generally State and Territory legislation) and receive the vast majority of their public funding from the Australian Government, through the Higher Education Support Act 2003.

Some aspects of higher education are the responsibility of States and Territories. In particular, most universities are established or recognised under State and Territory legislation.

The Australian National University, the Australian Film, Television and Radio School and the Australian Maritime College are established under Commonwealth legislation.

The Australian Catholic University is established under corporations law. It has establishment Acts in New South Wales and Victoria.

Many private providers are also established under corporations law.

States and Territories are also responsible for accrediting non-self-accrediting higher education providers.

As self-accrediting institutions, Australia’s universities have a reasonably high level of autonomy to operate within the legislative requirements associated with their Australian Government funding.

The Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) provides descriptors for qualifications accredited through the higher education sector, as well as those accredited by the vocational and technical education sector and the schools sector. All accredited higher education providers are listed on the AQF register.

[edit] Classification of tertiary qualifications

In Australia, the classification of tertiary qualifications is governed in part by the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF), which attempts to integrate into a single classification all levels of tertiary education (both vocational and higher education), from trade certificates to higher doctorates.

However, as Australian universities (and a few similar higher education institutions) largely regulate their own courses, the primary usage of AQF is for vocational education. However in recent years there have been some informal moves towards standardization between higher education institutions.

In Australia, higher education awards are classified as follows:

  • Bachelors degrees, generally the first university degree undertaken, which take 3-4 years to complete, and consist primarily of coursework. Bachelors degrees are sometimes awarded with honours to the best-performing students.

In some courses, honours is awarded on the basis of performance throughout the course (usually in 4yr+ courses), but normally honours consists of undertaking a year of research (e.g. a short thesis or Masters by Research). If honours is undertaken as an extra year, it is known as an honours degree rather than a degree with honours.

Honours may be divided into First Class, Second Class (normally divided into Division I and Division II), and Third Class. This is roughly equivalent to the American classification of summa cum laude, magna cum laude, and cum laude. Individuals who do not attempt honours, or who fail their honours course, are awarded a degree with a grade of Pass.

  • Masters degrees, which are undertaken after the completion of one or more Bachelors degrees. Masters degrees deal with a subject at a more advanced level than Bachelors degrees, and can consist either of research, coursework, or a mixture of the two.
  • Doctorates, most famously Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), which are undertaken after an Honours Bachelors or Masters degree, by an original research project resulting in a thesis or dissertation. Admission to candidature for a PhD generally requires either a Bachelor's degree with good honours (First Class or Second Class Division I), or a Masters degree with a research component.

In many cases a student with only a Pass Bachelor's degree can enroll in a Masters program and then transfer to a PhD. Australian PhDs do not tend to take as long as American or British ones, and consist of less coursework than most American PhDs. There are also professional doctorates which consist of advanced coursework and a substantial project in an area such as education (DEd). There is no concept of a "first-professional doctorate" like those awarded in the United States.

  • Higher Doctorates, such as Doctor of Science (DSc) or Doctor of Letters (DLitt), which are awarded on the basis of a record of original research or of publications, over many years (often at least 10).

Australian Universities tend to award more named degrees than institutions in some other countries. Most Australian universities offer several different named degrees per a faculty. This is primarily for marketing purposes. Universities often try to outdo each other by offering the only degree titled with a popular major.

By contrast, at an undergraduate level at Oxford University, almost all students complete a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), even if they are studying areas such as Chemistry or Economics, whereas at most Australian institutions only students choosing to concentrate in the humanities would be awarded a B.A. However, although there is a large proliferation at the level of Bachelors and Masters, at the Doctorate and Higher Doctorate level most institutions only have four or five degrees in all, and almost all Doctorates are PhDs.

Unlike American institutions, where most medical doctors or lawyers (known as solicitors in Australia) will graduate with an M.D. or J.D., medical doctors and solicitors in Australia generally only graduate with Bachelor's degrees. In Australia, a degree of Doctor is only awarded after original research or honoris causa, although by custom medical doctors are permitted to assume that title without having completed a doctorate.

In the case of medical doctors, the most common award is M.B.B.S., the double degree of Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (this is similar to the case in Britain). The most common award for lawyers is LL.B. or BLaws (which are both abbreviations, one Latin and the other English, for Bachelor of Laws).

Traditionally in Australia, medical degrees were commenced immediately after secondary education, unlike in the United States where student generally complete an undergraduate degree first before going to medical school. However, some universities have introduced graduate entry only degrees in medicine, but these are still classified as Bachelors degrees.

Law is commonly studied as a combined degree, such as with Arts or Science (BA/LLB, BSc/LLB), with only a small number of places available for a 'straight' law degree. The large number of combined courses enable students to develop skills in a diverse range of areas. Another common combination is Commerce and Law, which opens up many positions in business, commerce and industry. The Law degree in Australia is seeing fewer graduates going on to become practicing solicitors; instead many graduates take work in private industry or government sectors.

Australian Bachelors degrees are commonly only 3 years in duration, unlike the four year degrees found in the United States, although some institutions offer four year degrees as well. The length of the degree usually depends on the field of study; for example engineering usually takes four years while medicine takes six. Combined degrees are also available and usually add an extra year of study. Australian universities tend to have less of an emphasis on a liberal education than many universities in the US, which is reflected in the shorter length of Australian degrees.

Associate's degree have recently been introduced. These generally take two years to complete and can be seen as equivalent to the Associate's degree in the US and the Foundation Degree in the UK. They are also equivalent to the older Australian qualifications the Diploma and the Advanced Diploma.

Prior to the 1980s health science disciplines were being established by Colleges of Advanced Education, who were forbidden to award "degrees". Courses were conducted and classified as a "Diploma of Applied Science in (discipline)". These courses had considerable content requirements, some having over 32 contact hours per week over a three year period. These "diplomas" have been somewhat devalued by the newer naming conventions, as some diploma courses conducted nowadays may only consist of attending 12 training days for a total of less than 72 contact hours. However, many former "diplomates" have either converted or upgraded their DipAppScis to the corresponding Bachelor degree, or have undertaken further post graduate study.

[edit] History

[edit] To World War II

The first university established in Australia was the University of Sydney in 1850, followed in 1853 by the University of Melbourne. Prior to federation in 1901 two more universities were established: University of Adelaide (1874), University of Tasmania (1890). At the time of federation, Australia's population was 3,788,100 and there were fewer than 2,652 university students. Two other universities were established soon after federation: University of Queensland (1909) and the University of Western Australia (1911). All of these universities were controlled by State governments and were largely modeled on the traditional British university system and adopted both architectural and educational features in line with the (then) strongly influential ‘mother’ country. In his paper Higher Education in Australia: Structure, Policy and DebateJim Breem observed that in 1914 only 3,300 students (or 0.1% of the Australian population) were enrolled in Universities. In 1920 the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee (AVCC) was formed to represent the interests of these six universities.

The ‘non-university’ institutions originally issued only trade/technical certificates, diplomas and professional Bachelor’s degrees. Although universities were differentiated from technical colleges and institutes of technology through their participation in research, Australian universities were initially not established with research as a significant component of their overall activities. For this reason, the Australian Government established the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in 1926 as a backbone for Australian scientific research. The CSIRO still exists today as a legacy, despite the fact that it essentially duplicates the role now undertaken by Australian universities.[citation needed]

Two university colleges and no new universities were established before World War II. On the eve of the War, Australia's population reached seven million. The university participation level was relatively low. Australia had six universities and two university colleges with combined student numbers of 14,236. 10,354 were degree students (including only 81 higher degree students) and almost 4,000 sub-degree or non-award students.

[edit] World War II to 1972

In 1942, the Universities Commission was created to regulate university enrolments and the implementation of the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme (CRTS).

After the war, in recognition of the increased demand for teachers for the "baby boom" generation and the importance of higher education in national economic growth, the Commonwealth Government took an increased role in the financing of higher education from the States. In 1946 the Australian National University was created by an Act of Federal Parliament as a national research only institution (research and postgraduate research training for national purposes). By 1948 there were 32,000 students enrolled, under the impetus of CRTS.

In 1949 the University of New South Wales was established.

During the 1950s enrollments increased by 30,000 and participation rates doubled.

In 1950 the Mills Committee Inquiry into university finances, focusing on short-term rather than long-term issues, resulted in the State Grants (Universities) Act 1951 being enacted (retrospective to 1 July 1950). It was a short-term scheme under which the Commonwealth contributed one quarter of the recurrent costs of "State" universities.

In 1954 the University of New England was established. In that year, Prime Minister the Robert Menzies established the Committee on Australian Universities. The Murray Committee Inquiry of 1957 found that financial stringency was the root cause of the shortcomings across universities: short staffing, poor infrastructure, high failure rates, weak honours and postgraduate schools. It also accepted the financial recommendations in full which led to increased funds to the sector and establishment of Australian Universities Commission (AUC) and that the Commonwealth Government should accepted greater responsibility for the States’ universities.

In 1958 Monash University was established. States Grants (Universities) Act 1958 allocated funding to States for capital and recurrent expenditure in universities for the triennial 1958 to 1960. In 1959 the Australian Universities Commission Act 1959 established the AUC as a statutory body to advise the Commonwealth Government on university matters. Between 1958 and 1960 there was more than a 13% annual increase in university enrollments. By 1960 there were 53,000 students in ten universities. There was a spate of universities established in the 1960s and 70s: Macquarie University (1964), La Trobe University (1964), the University of Newcastle (1965), Flinders University (1966), James Cook University (1970), Griffith University (1971), Deakin University (1974), Murdoch University (1975), University of Wollongong (1975). By 1960, the number of students enrolled in Australian Universities had reached 53,000. By 1975 there were 148,000 students in 19 universities.

[edit] After 1972

Until 1973 university tuition was funded either through Commonwealth scholarships which were based on merit or through fees. Tertiary education in Australia was structured into three sectors:

  • Universities
  • Institutes of Technology (a hybrid between a university and a technical college).
  • Technical Colleges.

During the early 1970s, there was a significant push to make tertiary education in Australia more accessible to working and middle class Australians. In 1973, the Whitlam Labor Government abolished university fees. This decision did not greatly change the socio-economic backgrounds of students attending universities because only 20 to 25 percent of students paid fees as most had Commonwealth scholarships. Another reason for the lack of change was because low high school retention rates had resulted in many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds not completing secondary education and therefore never having the opportunity to choose to attend university. Nevertheless there was an increase in the university participation rate.

In 1974 the Commonwealth assumed full responsibility for funding higher education (universities and CAEs) and established the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission (CTEC) which had an advisory role and responsibility for allocating government funding among universities. But in 1975, in the context of federal political crisis and economic recession, triennial funding of universities was suspended. Demand remained with growth directed to CAEs and State-controlled TAFE colleges.

[edit] 1980s

By the mid 1980s, however, it became apparent that the concept of ‘free’ tertiary education in Australia was untenable due to the increasing participation rate.[citation needed] Ironically, a subsequent Labour Government (the Bob Hawke/Paul Keating Government) was responsible for gradually re-introducing fees for University study.[citation needed] In a relatively innovative move, however, the method by which fees were re-introduced proved to be a system accepted by both Federal political parties and consequently is still in place today. The system is known as the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) and enables students to defer payment of fees until after they commence professional employment, and after their income exceeds a threshold level – at that point, the fees are automatically deducted through income tax. Students also have the option of paying up-front for their education and receiving a discount commensurate with the interest rate saving associated with non-deferral.

By the late 1980s, the Australian tertiary education system was still a three-tier system, composed of:

  • Traditional universities (largely the original group plus a few 20th Century additions, such as Monash University)
  • A collection of institutes of technology (such as the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT))
  • A collection of colleges of Technical and Further Education (TAFE).

However, by this point, the roles of the universities, institutes of technology and the CSIRO had also become blurred.[citation needed] Institutes of technology had moved from their traditional role of undergraduate teaching and industry-consulting towards conducting pure and applied research – they also had the ability to award degrees through to Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) level.

For a number of reasons, including clarifying the role of institutes of technology, the Federal Minister for Education of the time (John Dawkins) created the unified national system, which compressed the former three-tier tertiary education system into a two-tier system. This required a number of amalgamations and mergers between smaller tertiary institutions, and the option for institutes of technology to become universities. As a result of these reforms, institutes of technology disappeared and were replaced by a collection of new universities. By the early 1990s, the two-tier tertiary education was in place in Australia – university education and Technical and Further Education (TAFE). By the early years of the new millennium, even TAFE colleges were permitted to offer degrees up to Bachelor’s level.

[edit] 1990s

For the most part, up until the 1990s, the traditional Australian universities had focused upon pure/fundamental/basic research rather than industry/applied research – a proportion of which had been well supported by the CSIRO which had been set up for this function.[citation needed] Australians had performed well internationally in pure research, having scored almost a dozen Nobel Prizes as a result of their participation in pure research.

In the 1990s, the Hawke/Keating Federal Government sought to redress the shortcoming in applied research by creating a cultural shift in the national research profile.[citation needed] This was achieved[citation needed] by introducing university scholarships and research grants for postgraduate research in collaboration with industry, and by introducing a national system of Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs). These new centres were focused on a narrow band of research themes (e.g., photonics, cast metals, etc.) and were intended to foster cooperation between universities and industry. A typical CRC would be composed of a number of industry partners, university partners and CSIRO. Each CRC would be funded by the Federal Government for an initial period of several years. The total budget of a CRC, composed of the Federal Government monies combined with industry and university funds, was used to fund industry-driven projects with a high potential for commercialization. It was perceived that this would lead to CRCs becoming self-sustaining (self funding) entities in the long-term, although this has not eventuated.[citation needed] Most Australian universities have some involvement as partners in CRCs, and CSIRO is also significantly represented across the spectrum of these centres.[citation needed] This has led to a further blurring of the role of CSIRO and how it fits in with research in Australian universities.[citation needed]

[edit] 2000s

The transition from a three-tier tertiary education system to a two-tier system was not altogether successful.[citation needed] Fundamentally, the problem with moving from eight research intensive traditional universities to a collection of nearly 40 new/traditional universities was that there were insufficient high-calibre research academics to sustain the new structure[citation needed] - previously, academics at institutes of technology had focused on teaching rather than research.[citation needed] Moreover, there was insufficient Federal research funding to sustain almost 40 universities undertaking research at an international level[citation needed], when a similar level of funding had previously only sustained eight.

By 2006, it became apparent that the long term problem for the unified national system was that newer universities could not build up critical mass in their nominated research areas[citation needed] - at the same time, their increase in research level deprived traditional universities of high calibre research-oriented academics.[citation needed] These issues were highlighted in the Melbourne Institute Discipline Ratings for Australian Universities published in 2006 (discussed below). The money that was available, was spread across all universities and even the traditional universities had a diminished capacity to maintain critical mass.[citation needed] The Melbourne Institute figures, based upon Government (DEST) data and publications citations from Thomson Scientificrevealed that many of the newer universities were scoring "zeros" (on a scale of 0 - 100) in their chosen research fields (i.e., were unable to achieve the threshold level of activity required).

[edit] Criticism

In the 1990s, however, during the early years of the unified national system, the solution to future sustainability, as perceived by Australia’s (then) vice chancellors, was to get more money into the system, rather than to rationalize the system itself.[citation needed] The Australian Vice Chancellors Committee argued on a number of occasions about the level of funding provided to Australian Universities relative to those in other OECD countries.[citation needed]

Also, admission into a field in Australia is highly restrictive, based on the pupils' score in secondary education, rather than merit. For example, the ACT system utilizes a University Admission Index, or UAI, to rank student against their peers. (This is called percentile in the US) This is a problem because as of April 27, 2008, the UAI needed to get into medicine is 95.[3] This means that only top 5% of students can possibly become doctors.

Another problem with the unified national system was that the major source of university funding (the Federal Government, through the Department of Education Science and Training) was performance-based (calculated via a performance formula) and, because the total funding was fixed, represented a zero-sum-game.[citation needed] In other words (arithmetically), if all universities simultaneously boosted their performance by expending more money then, in practice, they were financially disadvantaged. If all universities simultaneously decreased their performance by reducing their expenditure on staffing then, in practice, they were all potentially in a better financial position.

[edit] University fund raising schemes – international students

As a consequence of the ‘zero-sum-game’ funding model imposed by the Federal Government, by far the largest non-Government contributor to funding of the Australian University system is the international student ‘fee-paying’ market – in the order of $5,000,000,000 per annum by 2004.[citation needed] Australia’s share of the international student market is disproportionately high by international standards.[citation needed] The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade estimated that the Australian higher education sector accounted for some 12% of all education in countries with an English speaking base in 2004.[citation needed] This extraordinary success was essentially the product of three factors:

  • Early penetration of Australian universities into the emerging Asian market for education[citation needed]
  • The good international reputation established by the traditional universities[citation needed]
  • Opportunistic fortune[citation needed]

The opportunistic elements of the success led to an over-confidence in fast-money schemes based upon fee-paying international students.[citation needed] It also led to numerous[citation needed] accusations of declining educational standards in Australian universities and a culture of ‘fee-for-degree’. The Australian Broadcasting Commission's (ABC's) flagship current affairs television program '4 Corners' highlighted this problem in 2005, stating:

"And as foreign students have flooded in, universities have become mired in allegations about falling standards, soft marking, plagiarism and backdoor immigration..."

This was particularly evident in postgraduate coursework programs[citation needed] (particularly Master’s coursework degrees) which had significant appeal to the burgeoning Asian markets.[citation needed]

[edit] Governance

With a larger proportion of university turnover derived from non-Government funds[citation needed], the role of university vice chancellors moved from one of academic administration to strategic management.[citation needed] However, university governance structures remained largely unchanged from their 19th Century origins. All Australian universities have a governance system composed of a vice-chancellor (chief executive officer); chancellor (non-executive head) and university council (governing body). However, unlike a corporate entity board, the university council members have neither financial nor vested specific interests in the performance of the organization (although the state government is represented in each university council, representing the state government legislative role in the system).

[edit] Melbourne University Private venture

The late 1990s and early years of the new millennium therefore witnessed a collection of financial, managerial and academic failures across the university system[citation needed]– the most notable of these being the Melbourne University Private venture, which saw hundreds of millions of dollars invested in non-productive assets, in search of a ‘Harvard style’ private university that never delivered on planned outcomes. This was detailed in a book ("Off Course") written by former Victorian State Premier John Cain and co-author John Hewitt who explored problems with governance at the University of Melbourne, arguably the nation's most prestigious university.

The Melbourne Age newspaper reported in regard to the Melbourne University Private affair, and John Cain's book that:

"It (the Cain/Hewitt book) argues that the University of Melbourne has put the raising of money from private sources above its duty as a public university, that its most strenuous efforts in this endeavour have failed, that it refuses to admit the failures and reports them inadequately."

A number of universities and research centres/institutes were also plagued with financial and academic scandals arising from poor governance; lack of management experience; lack of strategic planning capability and direction. Many of these were reported in the Australian media, including:

  • The ABC's 2000 4 Corners program which looked at the public float of the Melbourne IT company from the University of Melbourne
  • The ABC's 2003 4 Corners program which looked at issues of academic impropriety at the University of New South Wales
  • The ABC's 2005 Latelineprogram which examined inappropriate conduct in the Cooperative Research Centre for Photonics

One of the underlying governance problems for Australian Universities is that, as a legacy of their establishment, legislative control of universities resides with the states, but funding is derived from the Australian Federal Government.[citation needed] This means that whenever there is no consensus between state and Federal governments in regard to directions, universities are subsequently left in an ambivalent position with potentially conflicting objectives.[citation needed] Moreover, despite having a Federal funding system, the legislative process for universities can vary from state to state and hence, nationally, there is no uniformity of governance.

[edit] Management approaches

By the early years of the 21st Century, the participation rate in Australian Universities had increased significantly. The DEST 2005 Statistics showed that enrolments in Australian universities had reached 674,092 effective full time students, an increase of more than tenfold since 1960. It was infeasible to scale the fee-per-student, provided by the Government to each university in the 1960s, accordingly to the levels required in the 21st Century. Either costs had to be reduced (through a combination of rationalization, technological change and administrative efficiency) or income had to be increased through additional fee raising mechanisms.

In 2002, Jim Breen of Monash University wrote in his paper Higher Education in Australia: Structure, Policy and Debate

"Despite, or because of the massive growth in the higher education sector, there is a general view that all is not well:

  • staff are mostly unhappy:
    • increased teaching loads
    • falling staff/student ratios (from 1/12 in 1980 to 1/19 in 2001)
    • entrepreneurial and management practices dominating research and scholarship
    • decline and elimination of traditional areas such classics, physics, etc.
  • university administrations are asking for more flexibility to charge fees, specialize, etc.
  • a common public perception that a good higher education system is important for the country's future, and that more can/should be done.
  • a refusal by the Commonwealth to increase funding levels, in line with philosophies of tight fiscal control and user pays."

An inability to scale up operations, in a climate of reducing dollars-per-student, was manifested in reports[citation needed] of poor operational performance of individual faculties, particularly those in high cost areas such as science and engineering. Indeed, in 2006, Lord Alec Broers of Cambridge University conducted a review of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Melbourne. The resulting ‘Broers Review’ confirmed the sorts of issues raised earlier, and presented a litany of maladministration, poor teaching methods, collapse of undergraduate infrastructure, lack of planning, and so on. There was evidence to suggest that these poor practices were not restricted to one university but existed throughout the entire system[citation needed]– indeed, by some external measures the faculty reviewed by Broers had previously been judged to have been performing well relative to other comparable faculties in Australia.[citation needed]

In 2006, the Federal Education Minister (Julie Bishop, Liberal Party) made a number of public statements about the need for reform and rationalization.[citation needed] In one statement, the Minister suggested that Australia’s interests might be best served by having only a dozen generalist universities and a collection of other specialist entities.[citation needed] To date, this is the only indicator of significant change at a Federal level.

[edit] Federal Government quality measures

The Australian Federal Government has established two quality systems for assessing university performance. These are the Australian Universities Quality Agency (AUQA) and the Research Quality Framework (RQF). The AUQA reviews of universities essentially look at processes, procedures and their documentation. The AUQA exercise, largely bureaucratic rather than strategic[citation needed], is currently moving towards its second round of assessments, with all Australian universities having seemingly received mixed (but generally positive) results in the first round.[citation needed] AUQA’s shortcoming is that it does not specifically address issues of Governance or strategic planning in anything other than a bureaucratic sense.[citation needed] In the April 2007 edition of Campus Review the Vice Chancellor of the University of New South Wales (Fred Hilmer) criticized both AUQA and the RQF:

"... singling out AUQA, Hilmer notes that while complex quality processes are in place, not one institution has lost its accreditation - 'there's never been a consequence - so it's just red tape...'"

"...The RQF is not a good thing - it's an expensive way to measure something that could be measured relatively simply. If we wanted to add impacts as one of the factors, then let's add impact. That can be achieved simply without having to go through what looks like a $90 million dollar exercise with huge implementation issues."

The RQF (scrapped with the change in government in 2007), was modeled on the British Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) system, and was intended to assess the quality and impact of research undertaken at universities through panel-based evaluation of individual research groups within university disciplines. Its objective was to provide government, industry, business and the wider community with an assurance that research quality within Australian universities had been rigorously assesseded against international standards. Assessment was expected to allow research groups to be benchmarked against national and international standards across discipline areas. If successfully implemented, this would have been a departure from the Australian Government’s traditional approach to measuring research performance exclusively through bibliometrics. The RQF was fraught with controversy[citation needed], particularly because the cost of such an undertaking (using international panels) and the difficulty in having agreed definitions of research quality and impact. The Labor government which scrapped the RQF, has yet to outline any system which will replace it, stating however that it will enter into discussions with higher education providers, to gain consensus on a streamlined, metrics-driven approach.

[edit] Current university performance – the Melbourne Institute study

Australian universities do not feature prominently in the top 100 international universities as ranked by the Jiao Tong Index [4]. The two universities which regularly appear therein are the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University. Australian universities do, however, perform somewhat better in the Times Higher Education Rankings, which are more Anglo-centric in their composition.

Overall, however, the relative international performance of Australian universities suffers from the dilution associated with a unified national system which encourages almost 40 universities to be generalist in their nature and approach.[citation needed]

In 2006, the Melbourne Institute conducted a ‘discipline by discipline’ study of the performance of all Australian universities, and combined this with a national and international survey. Notwithstanding the fact that the Melbourne Institute is part of the University of Melbourne, the Institute's Discipline by Discipline Rankings Paper provides the most comprehensive assessment of the status of Australian universities which is currently available.[citation needed] A number of parameters (including undergraduate entry scores; student satisfaction; the official Federal Department of Education Science and Training research figures; publication data from Thomson Scientific; student/staff ratios, international rankings, etc.) were assessed to provide a discipline by discipline ranking of universities, on a scale of 0 – 100.

Of the universities which were included in the rankings, only six were able to average a relative score of more than 50 in the areas in which they competed. Two of the G8 universities (University of Adelaide and University of Western Australia) did not achieve a 50% average. Most of the newer universities average around 30% relative performance in their chosen disciplines. This study highlights a lack of capacity, investment and focus in chosen areas (a number of universities average zeros in their chosen research areas in terms of outputs). It should also be noted that a score of 100 is relative to other Australian universities and is not an absolute measure in an international sense.

[edit] Future directions

The current Australian Federal Government (Liberal Party) and the Federal Opposition Party (Labor Party) have both signaled that the ‘one size fits all’ approach to universities, which emerged from the Dawkins’ reforms, is nearing an end.[citation needed] Universities are being encouraged to find their own niches.[citation needed] The difficulty with this is that the undergraduate and postgraduate programs which prove to be financially lucrative (i.e., profitable) in terms of sustaining the core business of a university are limited (Medicine, Law, Business, Economics and Commerce), and there is a tendency for all universities to pursue high profile areas, rather than invest in high cost areas which have national economic significance (engineering and science).[citation needed] None of the Australian universities have currently taken steps for significant cost cutting in administration and rationalization of duplicated services and facilities.[citation needed]

Of the current universities, only the University of Melbourne has signaled a change in direction in terms of its education.[citation needed] Again, this is based upon increasing income rather than through cost reductions through modern management principles.[citation needed] The so-called ‘Melbourne Model’ is due for implementation in 2008. The objective is to pursue an American-style educational program composed of generic undergraduate degrees which as yet have no professional recognition in Australia[citation needed], and then follow these with professional postgraduate degrees which do have professional recognition (e.g., Law or Engineering)[citation needed]. This strategy enables the University to by-pass the current Federal Government restrictions on fee-paying undergraduate places by effectively reclassifying former undergraduate programs as a combination of generic undergraduate and professional graduate programs. In its website The University of Melbourne claims that this will provide a broader educational model in line with the so-called Bologna Model of education applied in Europe[citation needed]. Opponents claim that identical educational outcomes could have been achieved by a five year undergraduate program without the introduction of full-fees[citation needed].

None of the other G8 universities have signaled any intention to make any fundamental changes to the way in which they function, although some have indicated interest in the Melbourne Model of fee paying education[citation needed].

Given the positions of both the Federal Government and Federal Opposition, it is clear that universities will change over the coming years[citation needed]. The data from the Melbourne Institute Study (particularly the research output data which the study derived from Government DEST figures and Thomson ISI) highlights the fact that a number of the current universities have insufficient capacity in their chosen disciplines to achieve threshold performance at an international level[citation needed].

[edit] Australian Universities

Many universities in Australia have gained international recognition. Two of the most acknowledged are the Academic Ranking of World Universities, produced by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and the THES - QS World University Rankings,[1] which in 2006, had no fewer than 13 universities amongst the world's top 200.

[edit] Vocational Education and Training

The major providers of vocational education and training (VET) in Australia are the various state-administered institutes of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) across the country. TAFE institutions generally offer short courses, Certificates I, II, III, and IV, Diplomas, and Advanced Diplomas in a wide range of vocational topics. They also sometimes offer Higher Education courses, especially in Victoria.

In addition to TAFE Institutes there are many Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) which are privately operated. In Victoria alone there are approximately 1100. They include:

  • commercial training providers,
  • the training department of manufacturing or service enterprises,
  • the training function of employer or employee organisations in a particular industry,
  • Group Training Companies,
  • community learning centres and neighbourhood houses,
  • secondary colleges providing VET programs.

In size these RTOs vary from single-person operations delivering training and assessment in a narrow specialisation, to large organisations offering a wide range of programs. Many of them receive government funding to deliver programs to apprentices or trainees, to disadvantaged groups, or in fields which governments see as priority areas.

All TAFE institutes and private RTOs are required to maintain compliance with a set of national standards called the Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF), and this compliance is monitored by regular internal and external audits.

VET programs delivered by TAFE Institutes and private RTOs are based on nationally registered qualifications, derived from either endorsed sets of competency standards known as Training Packages, or from courses accredited by state/territory government authorities. These qualifications are regularly reviewed and updated. In specialised areas where no publicly owned qualifications exist, an RTO may develop its own course and have it accredited as a privately owned program, subject to the same rules as those that are publicly owned.

All trainers and assessors delivering VET programs are required to hold a qualification known as the Certificate IV in Training and Assessment (TAA40104) or demonstrate equivalent competency. They are also required to have relevant vocational competencies, at least to the level being delivered or assessed.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ [1] — A 2006 ranking from THES - QS of the world's research universities.

[edit] External links