Australian Employers Are Satified With Graduates

The "2018 Employer Satisfaction Survey" (QILT, 10 January 2019), indicates employers are very happy with the graduates they get. The Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) team, was funded by the Australia Government. An analysis of 5,300 survey results from graduate supervisors showed 84.8% were satisfied with their graduates. The least satisfied were in creative arts. It may be that the more vocationally aligned STEM degrees are a closer match to jobs.

The Group of Eight "Leading Universities" did not do so well, with only half of them scoring above average for employer satisfaction. There is no clear relationship between university size, focus or location, and employer satisfaction. Perhaps it is just that Australia has high standards, and we don't have any "bad" universities. This is good news for employers, but does it indicate Australia is over investing in university education?

ps: Bond University topped the 2018 Employer Satisfaction Survey, so it should be worth listening to their Professor Keitha Dunstan, Deputy Vice- Chancellor (Academic), 26th February, 2019. The event is in Canberra, although Blackboard's web page confusingly says "Sydney".

The Australian Student Experience

The Australian Student Experience Survey 2016 has been published by the Australian Government on the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) website. Overall the news is good, with a Teaching Quality rating of 81% overall. The result which the media has focused on is that the Group of Eight leading universities scored below average for student satisfaction. However, these are leading universities based on the quality of their research. If students want a better educational experience they should choose an institution which has education as the priority, not research. However, contrary to the advertising by universities, study is not fun, it is very hard work, stressful and frustrating.

One other finding is that the percentage of higher education students who considered dropping out is higher for External/Distance students is 17% higher than for other students (21% versus 18%). This is also not a surprise, as it is more difficult for distance students to remain engaged. But what is surprising is that overall at all times about one in five students are considering dropping out. Last month Dr Cathy Stone produced National Guidelines for Improving Student Outcomes in Online Learning. While intended for e-learning, these measures be applied to improving retention of on-campus students as well.

The reason for  41% of those considering withdrawing is health or stress. Course designers can assist this by reducing the stress caused, especially by assessment. I suggest the use of early and frequent progressive assessment.

A surprising result is the percentage of students with low grades who had considered quiting. The higher the grade the fewer students consider quitting. However, about 45% of students with a grade of 49% or lower consider quitting. This seems a low figure and I would have thought more students would consider withdrawing. While universities should have measures for retaining students, they should also be encouraged to withdraw where the course does not suit them.

Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching in Australian Higher Education

The Australian Government funds the QILT Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching website. One point to note is if your browser has an ad-blocker, such as AdBlockPlus you may not see any institutions listed (I didn't until I disabled the ad-blocker for the QILT site). QILT lists 55 institutions offering Teacher Education (including Vocational Education & Training, and Higher Education and Special Education). There are 44 institutions offering programs at the postgraduate level (39 Universities and 9 Non-Universities). 

One limitation with the QILT site is that there is no option to select institutions offering on-line courses. The assumption seems to be that the potential student will select a state and then look at institutions in that state.

The site requires the student to select no more than six institutions to compare. There is no way, for example, to list all the institutions in Australia, by quality ranking and then select the top six. The student would have to look at each institution and manually note and sort the top six.

There are  5 ACT Universities with Postgraduate courses in Teacher Education listed. So I selected all five, plus Montessori Institute (a non-university postgraduate provider, which, not surprisingly trains Montessori teachers). Only four institutions were shown, due to too small a number of students for the with two. The four institutions were around 80%, on "Overall satisfaction" and with confidence intervals so wide that this which not be of use in selecting between institutions. On the "Teaching scale"
University of Canberra was 10% above the others.  On the "Skills scale" University of New South Wales was slightly ahead.

What is not clear is how useful this information is for students selecting programs. The differences between institutions are minimal. A better approach might be to put resources into ensuring all institutions meet an acceptable minimum standard, so a student knows that if they enroll locally they will receive an acceptable quality education.

Also with the transition to e-learning the quality of legacy classroom based courses will be of little relevance.Students are increasingly likely to follow the approach I took in looking for a program in 2013. First I looked in the city where I lived. After finding nothing suitable in my city, I think looked internationally. Once beyond commuting distance, it makes little difference if the institution is 1,000 km or 10,000 km away. In the last five years I have been a student of ANU and CIT (within 10 km of home), USQ (1,000 km) and Athabasca University (14,000 km).