Vocational Degrees were added to the Australian Qualifications Framework on 17 February 2025. These are at the same level as a university bachelor's degree (AQF Level 7), but deliver by Vocational Education institutions and with an emphasis on work skills, including those gained via an apprenticeship. It is not clear if this signals a Dedawkinsation of Australian higher education. In 2024 I visited two of Singapore's Polytechnics and was impressed with their work.
In my discipline of computing it would be difficult to see the difference with a vocational degree. Students are required to do practical training, through a project, group work or internship, for their qualification to be accredited, regardless of what type of institution is delivering it.
In the late 1980s Education Minister John Dawkins reformed Australian higher education. This "Dawkins Revolution" resulted in degree awarding colleges merging and becoming universities. Having VET sector institutions awarding degrees could be seen as a partial undoing of this revolution, although they will not have the autonomy universities have to define their own degrees.
Australian universities only need a few students undertaking undergraduate training oriented to research in order to provide candidates for advanced research in academia and industry. The majority of undergraduates are undertaking vocational training for a job. If the VET sector can now provide Vocational Degrees for these students, will university education need to be scaled back?
Vocational degrees are being introduced at the same time AI is developing. New degrees could be AI enabled, providing each student with a synthetic personal tutor.
ps: I happened to bump into John Dawkins a few years ago at the ANU campus and was delighted to be able to point out the new buildings to him.
The Australian Government announced funding for short online university programs, in response to the COVID-19 Coronavirus, on 12 April 2020. There are 77 programs offer from today on the Courseseeker website (look for course category: "Short course"). These are undergraduate certificates (46) and graduate certificates (31), requiring six months full time study. While welcome, I suggest government make some improvements to the scheme, to allow for part-time study, nested programs, and mutual recognition of the certificates. Also I suggest incorporation of compulsory peer support training in all certificates, to address the elevated mental health risk, particularly for young people isolated at home, studying online, during a pandemic.
Study Areas
The emphasis in the announcement was on areas of study to help with the COVID-19 emergency. This is reflected in the programs offered. With health, including aged care and biomedical science, the largest offering, followed by education:
Study Area
Number of Programs
Health
25
Education
18
Information Technology
10
Engineering & Related Technologies
9
Agriculture, Environment & Related Studies
5
Natural & Physical Sciences
5
Architecture & Building
3
Society & Culture
2
Total
77
Acceptance of Certificates
The Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, caused confusion at the time of the announcement by describing these as "micro-credentials" and "diploma certificates". What are being offered are six month full time programs. A micro-credential is much shorter, requiring only hours, days or weeks of study, not six months. A diploma requires a year of study.
A Graduate certificate is a well known, well understood, and legally recognized term. Such programs have been used in the past as a way for someone from a discipline to gain extra skills and knowledge to work in a specialization. A Graduate Certificate in Australian Migration Law is one path to registration as a migration agent. A certificate in cyber security is useful for an IT professionals to work in security. It can also be an entry point to further studies. As an example, I undertook a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education, to help me learn to teach, and to then go on to a Masters of Educaiton.
Graduate certificates are a low risk, low cost, well understood option for universities to provide. The students are more mature than undergraduates, so are easier to teach. The course materials and classes can be shared with graduate diploma and masters programs.
Legality and Acceptance of Undergraduate Certificates
While graduate certificates are well known, as Andrew Norton points out ‘undergraduate certificates’ are not currently recognized in the Australian education system. If a private for-profit educational institution was to offer such a qualifcaiton, they could expect legal action from regulators. However, public universities are offering these with the blessing of government, with legal status to be conferred retrospectively.
While legal status may not be a major problem, industry acceptance and pedagogy may, with undergraduate certificates. It is likely that the certificates will have been created in the same way as graduate certificates, from components of longer diplomas and bachelor programs. As an example, UWS with its Undergraduate Certificate in Information and Communication Technology offers the possibility of credit towards a degree, and presumably the certificate is built from that degree. However, unlike graduate students, these undergraduate students may be new to university study, as well as to online study. It takes time for a young person (the minimum age is 17 years) to get used to study at university, as well as life in general.
While the undergraduate certificates are being offered as standalone qualifications, I suggest they would be better as the first part of a nested qualification. That is, it would be assumed the student was intending to go on to undertake a diploma, and from there a degree. Ideally this would allow for blended learning. That is the student would undertake some study online and some on campus. My rule of thumb is that a typical student would be on campus for 20% of their study, about one day a week (obviously where COVID-19 restrictions allow).
Do We Need Undergraduate Certificates When We Have VET Ones?
While graduate certificates have been accepted as a qualification for particular roles, undergraduate certificates have not. The Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector already has a well established set of qualifications for jobs in the fields the undergraduate certificates are being offered in. These VET qualifications have been recognized in laws, and in industry hiring practices. The VET sector is experienced in turning out students who are ready with practical skills needed for a very specific workplace role. However, universities have focused on much longer programs and more general higher level skills. In some cases universities have formed partnerships with VET institutions (or have VET arms), where the student does enough training in VET sector to get a job, then then transitions to university for a degree. It is not clear there is really a need for vocationally useful undergraduate certificates, or than Australia's universities are equipped to provide them.
There is also a lack of alignment between VET sector and university qualifications. As an example, to be able to teach in the VET sector, I was required to complete a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment. This was despite already having a Graduate Certificate in the field of education. In practice I was able to obtain 80% of the VET certificate based on my university experience and education. Even so this took months of elapsed time and payment of additional fees.
Will Universities Value They Own Certificates?
Within the VET system qualifications are mutually recognized, but this does not apply between VET and university, between or within universities. A student who has completed a unit of study at a public or private VET institution has that automatically accepted at any other for credit. However, the UWS Undergraduate Certificate in IC&T"may be credited towards the degree". In this case the university is not guaranteeing to recognize its own certificate for further study, let alone one from another university. If the undergraduate certificates are to continue beyond the next six months, I suggest the government make funding conditional on universities accepting their own certificates, and those from other universities, for advanced standing.
Need Part Time Certificates
I suggest government allow certificates, undergraduate and graduate, to be part time.
The certificates offered under the government COVID-19 funding are all full time.
This makes sense as a short term emergency measure. The nation
needs health and other workers quickly to deal with the
pandemic. It is also a way to keep young people occupied while forced to
remain at home. It provides them with a qualification to get a job much
quicker than a degree. However, undertaking full time study online is
very difficult, especially for a young inexperienced student. Adding to
that isolation due to COVID-19 greatly increases the difficulty, and the risk of mental health issues.
It has been common practice for Graduate Certificates to be offered part time. This is useful for working professionals, who cannot take six months off work to study. It is particularly useful with online study. Even so, as an online graduate student I found I could not do more than one quarter of a full time course load comfortably. This was under almost ideal conditions, where I was a mature student with very good IT skills, studying with some of the world's top online educators, and already experienced in the field I was studying. The typical young undergraduate is going to have considerable difficulty studying full time.
Address the elevated mental health risk
Even with all the advantages I had as an online student, it was not the fun depicted in university advertisements: it was a frightening, painful, frustrating experience. The Australian Government ,and universities, need to address the elevated mental health risks, particularly for young people isolated at home, studying online full-time, during a pandemic.
Students are encouraged to take part in extra-curricular and co-curricular activities on campus. This can't be assumed for online students, especially not with COVID-19 measures in place. I suggest universities need to teach students how to form and maintain peer support groups online, and make this an assessed compulsory part of studies. Leaving this as something optional and voluntary, is an unacceptable risk to the health, and the lives, of students. In addition, not teaching students how to support each other will result in a higher dropout rate, and so a waste of public money.
The Australian Minister for Education, Dan Tehan, and the Minister for Employment, Michaelia Cash, announced a Higher Education Relief Package, in response to the COVID-19 Coronavirus, 12 April 2020. Overall the intention of the package is good, but some of the details will need considerable work. Andrew Norton has produced a very useful commentary on this, but here are some additional comments of my own.
The package envisages Australians studying online to improve their job skills, while waiting for pandemic control measures to be reduced allowing a general return to work. Areas of study mentioned are nursing,
teaching, health, IT and "science". Short, online courses, from universities and private providers will be subsidized, from May for six months (initially). Strangely missing from the list of areas of study is any specific mention of engineering, or manufacturing, given the need for Australia to rapidly produce strategic products to meet the current emergency.
The announcement refers to the short courses being from "world-class universities", but presumably that is a rhetorical flourish and the intention is not to limit the program to the top half dozen Australian research universities which rank highly internationally. That would be unfortunate as it is the lower ranking regional teaching universities which have more expertise and experience with online learning in Australia. I studied how to do online learning (via online learning), at the University of Southern Queensland, which while providing good courses and is highly regarded in that field, is not a "world class" university.
In addition, government funding for universities will be "at
current levels, even if there is a fall in domestic student numbers". There is no offer of government funding to make up a shortfall in international student fees.
How the new funding for short courses will be administered is not detailed in the announcement. It should be remembered that previously about $2.2B was paid to private trainer providers for courses of dubious quality, or in some cases, not delivered at all. While "innovative micro-credentials delivered flexibly online" is a worthy goal, there are no agreed definition as to what a micro-credential is. Micro-credentials are not currently part of the Australian Qualifications Framework, and some have formal coursework, while some do not. Short courses can range from one hour's study, to about the length of a typical university unit (about 100 hours).
I have worked in this area of education for ten years, designing and delivering short online courses. I have been involved in several micro-credential projects and on professional standards bodies overseeing these, presented papers at international conferences, given evidence to a Senate inquiry, and blogged on the topic, but I am still not sure what a micro-credential is. Or it may be that micro-credentials mean many different things to university, and vocational providers.
I suggest universities should take a cautious approach to micro-credentials, due to the high reputational risk from over-promising. As an example, it is common for universities to offer short courses which do not count for credit towards a degree, are not aligned with the AQF, and are not specific to a job. However, a "micro-credential" is clearly intended to be a type of credential: that is a qualification. In the context of the government announcement, by issuing this qualification, the university has certified the holder has the skills needed to undertake a specific workplace task. Universities cannot use disclaimer to say the credential is not a credential, and those so qualified are not qualified. One way I suggest universities can navigate this legal and ethical minefield, is to integrate short courses in existing AQF qualifications. As an example, in 2016 I set out to design a teaching course for IT professionals. Teaching is a recognized skill in the computing discipline internationally. Australian universities are accredited to provide degrees under well established national procedures. So what I proposed was to create a teaching course within that framework. This way the familiar quality controls of the university system and professions could be applied.
To make a university course into a set of "micro-credentials" I proposed dividing it into three or four parts, with each part aligned with a set of externally defined skills. A student would receive a micro-credential for completing each part. Those who completed all the micro-credentials would receive one course credit towards a degree. None of this will be new to the vocational education sector, which has been routinely producing nationally standardized job relevant short courses for decades. However, this is a new skill for many university educators (some of us are dual qualified in by VET and university sectors).
The report uses the example of the EdX Micromasters, where students can obtain credit towards up to one-quarter of a Masters (six
months of the two years full-time study) for completing a series of online
courses. This is a curious choice, as
the EdX MicroMasters is comparable to a Graduate Certificate in the AQF, and so not very "micro", compared to recognition of much smaller microcredentials in New Zealand. The NZ micro-credentials are equivalent to 1 to 8 weeks study, whereas the EdX MicroMasters is 12 weeks of study. Also the Report's endorsement of the term MicroMasters (an EdX trademark), is troubling. What is next, Masters degrees rebranded as "DemiDoctorates"? ;-)
The report claims a national credit points system "would make learning outcomes more comparable between different institutions". However, that is likely to be opposed by institutions which strive to differentiate themselves, in particular universities wanting to be be seen to be superior to Vocational Educaiton and Training (VET) institutions, contrary to the report's wish for a credit point scheme to "contribute to parity of esteem between VET and higher education by expressing the equivalence in value of learning from both systems". Also research intensive universities are unlikely to want to be part of a scheme which equates their offerings with that of education focused universities, let alone the VET sector.
I put some thoughts on how to reform Australian higher education last year when invited to give evidence to the an Australian Senate Committee on the Future of Work and Workers, at Parliament House in Canberra, alongside Rob Fitzpatrick, CEO of the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), and just after the ANU VC.
Except from the Review of the AQF Final Report 2019:
"The Panel has proposed a comprehensive set of reforms and an implementation plan that would see a future AQF evolve as follows:
A less complex AQF structure with a primary focus on the qualification types in the AQF (Degrees, Certificates etc.).
A single and clearer taxonomy comprising eight bands of knowledge and six bands of skills more flexibly applied. Application is not rigidly locked to other bands (or levels).
Contemporary definitions of knowledge and skills are used. Knowledge, Skills and Application are defined in terms of action – the information to inform action, the capabilities to take action and the context for action.
Using these features, the AQF is refocused on the design of qualifications linked to learning outcomes for individual qualifications.
Additional information is included to help define qualification types, particularly for qualifications leading to Nationally Recognised Training delivered through the VET sector, for apprenticeships and for research-oriented qualifications.
General capabilities (such as digital literacy and ethical decision making) are identified for use in individual qualifications.
A prototype national credit points system is developed for voluntary adoption by institutions and sectors.
Qualification types are realigned against the revised taxonomy (based on options outlined in this Report) including the addition of a higher diploma qualification. VET certificates can be more meaningfully titled to reflect their purpose.
The Senior Secondary Certificate of Education is more clearly defined and represented in the AQF in terms of its role in preparing young people for a range of pathways into VET and higher education (including with credit).
Volume of learning is expressed in terms of hours, not years, and applied as a benchmark for compliance and quality assurance.
An ongoing governance body for the AQF is established to give effect to decisions of the Review of the AQF and to provide advice on revisions to the AQF where required in the future.
AQF policies are updated or assigned to the relevant agency, with redundant policies removed. The AQF is more consistently referenced and applied in VET and higher education sector standards and guidelines."
From: AQF Review 2019 (numbering and emphasis added).
The Australian government today announced a review Australia’s education qualifications framework. This will be headed by Professor Peter Noonan, Victoria University. A Contextual Research for the Australian Qualifications Framework Review paper has been prepared by PhillipsKPA. The paper compares the AQF with other nations qualifications frameworks. One positive finding was more employer engagement in accreditation, than in Europe. A point against the AQF is regulation of the use of Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) and micro-credentials. The authors suggest removing administrative detail from the AQF where this is covered by regulation and legislation elsewhere.
Less usefully, the authors suggest moving to "credit points" as a measure of the volume of learning rather than years of study. Apart from helping international comparisons, this would make no practical difference, as the notional years can easily be converted to notional hours.
The report points out that accreditation processes are similar between professional bodies: with a public document published specifying competencies, or a body of knowledge, which
graduates are to have.Most are aligned with Australian post-secondary requirements, such as TEQSA, AQF, and Higher Education
Standards Framework.
Of 100 accrediting bodies, all but 14 were self-regulating. The exceptions were for health
professionals, under the National Registration and
Accreditation Scheme. Half the accrediting agencies belonged to Professions
Australia, Australian Health Professions Accreditation Councils
Forum or another umbrella body. The authors expressed concern about smaller
and newer professional bodies lacking resources for effective accreditation and not drawing on the experience of other groups.
Most accreditation is now national, but some is still state based, with inconsistencies between states. Accreditation of teacher education was identified by the authors as a problem area with a whole chapter (5) devoted to the topic. State authorities were interpreting national teaching requirements inconsistently and adding their own criteria. the authors made the extrondary statement:
"The high political and industrial stakes
surrounding initial teacher education confound investigation and
resolution of the apparent difficulties in this report, and exceed by
far the terms of reference of this overview."
The engineering and computing professions come in for positive comment, with the authors noting that Engineers Australia was an original signatorys to the International Engineering Alliance’s
Washington Accord in 1989 and the Australian
Computer Society a signatory to the similar Seoul Accord. These accords recognize accreditation processes internationally. As a Certified Professional member of the ACS I benefit from this.
One problem noted, particularly for health professionals, was a requirement for training to undertaken in Australia or by Australian registered professionals. Another issue is programs accredited
by multiple professional bodies. One way around this, I suggest, are joint accreditations. As an example, I have been on a panel accrediting a program for both accounting and computing bodies. Even if there are two sets of paperwork to complete, it helps if the educational institution has to deal with just one visit by one panel.
One problem the report identifies are accreditation of programs using capstones, research projects, work-placed learning
and reflective journals. These are useful learning techniques, but require specialist skills and it helps if the teacher has been trained using these techniques (I undertook an e-portfolio capstone for my MEd).
The issue of accreditation of online programs does not receive as much attention as it deserves in the report:
'In the case of new mixed mode delivery technologies and paradigms
such as MOOCs the current approach is to put the onus on the
educational provider to provide the evidence that assessment of
learning outcomes is rigorous. Some providers express frustration
with the lack of familiarity with these methods represented in
review panels who tend to prefer traditional face to face approaches
to classroom teaching. Some providers are beginning to invite
accreditation panel members to log into their learning management
systems so they can “experience some aspects of what it is like to
be a student.”'
Australian higher education has already passed a tipping point: students now receive more of their instruction on-line than in face-to-face classrooms. Within a few years almost all university education will be undertaken online in Australia. I suggest accreditation bodies need to prepare for this reality, rather than treating it as a novel exception.
One recommendation in the report which may be contentious is:
"Mutual recognition of online and on campus programs could be
considered to avoid duplication of content where mode of delivery is
the only difference."
The
topic of how those who accredit programs is briefly covered, with the recommendation:
"Develop more efficient ways to train assessors – online,
collaborative inter-professional, inter-agency training."
The authors appear to have missed the obvious similarity between evaluation of programs within institutions and accreditation by outside bodies. Education specialists are trained in evaluation and I suggest these skills could also be applied to accreditation.
However, some skills are only defined at higher levels. ETMG, LEDA and ETDL start at level 3, but TMCR and PDSV start at 4 and TEAC at 5.
The entry level vocational qualification for the IT profession in Australia is "Diploma" in the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF Level 5). The Australian Computer Society has identified this as being SFIA Level 3. It would therefore be useful to have the SFIA learning/teaching skills defined at SFIA Level 3.
The entry level qualification for those conducting training in Australia is a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment at AQF Level 4. So it may be useful to also have the training skills defined at SFIA Level 2.
It should be noted that the qualifications required for those teaching in Australia are inversely related to the level at which they teach: the higher the level of the teaching, the lower the qualification required. School teachers are required to have a degree (soon to be masters), vocational teachers only a certificate and university lecturing requires no teaching qualification at all.
ps: The SFIA Foundation are one of the more responsive standards setting bodies. In 2008 I was commissioned by the ACS to design a course in Green IT. There were no SFIA skills defined for this at the time, so I sent my draft course to the SFIA Foundation. Skills in sustainability were subsequently added to SFIA and matched my course syllabus reasonably well. I later changed the course descriptions to reference SFIA. The course is currently offered by Athabasca University (Canada).
Loise Smith from ACS is talking about Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) at the Australian Computer Society Canberra Branch Conference. She mentioned in passing that SFIA Level 3 corresponds to the skills level expected of a university graduate in the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF). A Bachelor Degree is at AQF Level 7. This was good to hear, as I assumed this for Designing an Undergraduate Course on ICT Sustainability. Also I had assumed that SFIA Level 5, corresponds to a Masters Degree (AQF Level 9). Obviously these are approximate alignments.
The Australian Qualifications Framework (AFQ) has set standards for Australian higher education qualifications, which is a good thing. But this requires some adjustments by universities. One issue is how much teaching of research methods there is for honors students. There is a "AQF specification for the Bachelor Honours Degree", however honors is a hybrid between undergraduate and postgraduate. Honors is an extra year on a Bachelor degree, "to qualify individuals who apply a body of knowledge in a specific context to undertake professional work and as a pathway for research". Amongst the difficult questions this raises is how much about research do the students need to know and how they gain these skills. With just a year there is not a lot of time for formal research methods courses and then to "... plan and execute project work and/or a piece of research and scholarship with some independence".
If a "Verified Certificate" is not a recognised Australian qualification, should UNSW be issuing these? Even if Australians understand that these are not real qualifications, overseas students may not. This could damage Australia’s reputation for well managed education, if students think they can get an Australian university qualification for $49.
The European Quality Link (EQUAL) has issued a position paper to clarify what is required for a doctoral degree in management. This is due to concern that Masters level qualifications were being issued using the title "Doctor" or an abbreviation which could be confused with it. The policy also emphasises research, but does not specify how much of the three year degree this is to take up.
The Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) has two
forms of Doctoral Degree at its highest level: Doctoral Degree
(Research) and Doctoral Degree (Professional). Both forms require
research, but while this makes up at least two-thirds of the research degree, it is unspecified for the professional degree.
The title "Doctor" is used for both Research and Professional Doctoral
Degrees. But the AQF Qualification Issuance Policy also allows the title "Doctor" to be used for Masters Degrees in
medicine, physiotherapy, dentistry, optometry and veterinary practice (the people the general public normally think of as
"Doctors").
