University Dropouts Do Okay

Luckman and Harvey (2019) report that those who don't complete their Australian bachelor degree go on to earn more that those who do. This apparent paradox is explained by university dropouts completing some other form of post-school qualification. In particular those completing vocational education, such as at a TAFE, go on to earn more, on average, than degree holders. Also those to don't complete a degree at the first attempt are likely to start studying again later, at another university.

That our education system provides alternatives to a degree, and second attempts, I suggest shows the strength of the system. However, as I suggested to the Australian Senate Committee on the Future of Work and Workers, at Parliament House in Canberra last year, this could be improved with nested qualifications, and standardized curricular.

Nested qualifications would allow someone who can't complete their degree to leave with a sub-degree qualification (such as a certificate, diploma, or advanced diploma). Standardized curricular would allow the student to gain full credit for their incomplete studies at another institution. At present the student who leaves university without completing a degree likely gets no qualification at all, and if they apply elsewhere will have to redo much of what they have already done. The VET sector has applied both these approaches successfully.

Reference

Luckman, M., & Harvey, A. (2019). The financial and educational outcomes of Bachelor degree non-completers. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 41(1), 3-17. URL https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1360080X.2018.1553106?needAccess=true&

Studying half or less of a full-time student’s study load is a major non-completion risk

Norton, Cherastidtham and Mackey (2018) found that students studying half or less of a full-time load at university are at risk of not completing. The authors estimate that about 20% of the students commencing a bachelor degree in 2018, will not get the degree. They suggest alerting those considering study of the risk factors. However, I suggest there are many other ways to improve student outcomes.

One counter-intuitive recent finding by Shea and Bidjerano (2018) is that adding some on-line courses improves the completion of otherwise face-to-face campus based students. The optimal mix is between 10% and 60% online, depending on the institution, with the average being 40%. This was for US community colleges and it would be interesting to see if the same applies in Australia. It may be that the highly scaffolded nature of online courses helps struggling students, or it may be just that they can do an online course when their only other option would have been to terminate their studies.

Another way to improve university completion is with nested programs. With this option a student earns a sub-degree qualification after the equivalent of as little as six months study. They can use that qualification to help get a better job, and come back to study more later. It doesn't matter if the student takes eight, or more, years to earn a degree, as they have useful qualifications before then. Also it is much easier to be a student, and to teach students, who are already working in the field they are studying. The students can use their workplace experience in assignments and apply what they learn immediately. This might be a way to improve university completion statistics, with those who previously were recorded as degree non-completions instead being sub-degree completions.

One option I have found useful as a student myself is online study part time, with one course at a time and three or four courses a year. By deleting the usual long university holiday breaks between courses (which are largely irrelevant to part time students), it is possible to complete three or four courses a year. This allows a student to undertake a half full-time load, without the added burden of two courses at once.

The use of scaffolding in courses and on-line support for students between courses, use of e-portfolios and non-conventional assessment helps. At the micro level the student, especially the part time student, needs to know what they need to do right now. Also it is useful to provide an option where the student can document their learning and earn credit without having to complete a formal course.

Reference

Norton, A., Cherastidtham, I., and Mackey, W. (2018).
Dropping out: the benefits and costs of trying university. Grattan Institute. URL https://grattan.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/904-dropping-out-the-benefits-and-costs-of-trying-university.pdf

SHEA, Peter; BIDJERANO, Temi. Online Course Enrollment in Community College and Degree Completion: The Tipping Point. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, [S.l.], v. 19, n. 2, may. 2018. ISSN 1492-3831. Available at: <http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/3460/4568>. Date accessed: 05 May. 2018. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i2.3460. 

Narrow Focus on Completion Rates for Australian University Students is Discriminatory

The Australian Education and Training Minister, Simon Birmingham, wants universities to have a “laser focus” on student outcomes. The minister points out that six-year completion rates for university students had dropped to their lowest levels on record. This is based on the latest Completions Rates of Higher Education Students - Cohort Analysis, 2005-2015 from the Australian Department of Education and Training (November, 2017). However, the results are not as bad as the minister suggests and implementing the Minister's advice would make the situation worse, not better.

The key messages from the department's report were that 9 years after the 2007 students commenced, 73.6% had completed, almost the same as for 2005 and 2006. For 2010 students, 66.0% of students had completed after six years. This was the lowest completion rate since statistics collection commenced in 2005. However, it is only 0.9% lower than the average for other years. There is a similar 0.9% drop from 2011 to 2012.

A 0.9% drop in student completions does not look good. However, there has been a large increase in enrollments in the last few years. Students who were unable to attend university are now able to. It is likely that the same factors which previously prevented these students from attending university are now delaying, or preventing, completion of their completion.

The difference in the students is likely to also explain the different completion rates of students at different universities and those using different instructional techniques. This is not though any fault of the university, or lack of commitment on the part of the student, but due to the same circumstances which previously stopped the student enrolling.

Were universities to follow Minister Birmingham's suggestion for a “laser focus” on student outcomes, there would be undesirable social outcomes. To increase the student completion rates, universities would be forced to exclude low income students and others from disadvantaged groups, those from regional areas and students who have families. Universities would select only wealthy city kids.

As an alternative to a discriminatory student selection policy, I suggest that the Australian Government and the Universities agree on broader outcomes targets. One way to do this would be to lengthen the target completion time for degrees from nine to twelve years. Shorter term measures could target nested qualifications, so that students receive a vocationally useful qualification after completion of the equivalent of one or two years full time study, not a three year bachelor degree. In addition universities should be encouraged, to have measures which will help students study, such as introductory study skills courses and teaching staff with teaching qualifications.

An additional measure to increase university completions would be to encourage more students to enroll in Vocational Education and Training, before, or as an alternative to, university.

Lastly, but perhaps the easiest measure to implement, would be for universities to use academics who have been trained in how to teach. Research by Bryant and Richardson (2015) found that students with a teacher having a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education did better than those who just a PHD but no teaching qualification. It may not be popular with academics, but it would be a relatively simple administrative measure to require academics who teach to have a teaching qualification.  This is already the case for the VET sector, where teachers are required to have at least a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment.

Reference

Bryant, D., & Richardson, A. (2015). To be, or not to be, trained. Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 37(6), 682-688. URL https://doi.org/10.1080/1360080X.2015.1102818

Melbourne University VC on the Rising Tide of Hostility Towards Universities

Greetings from the Australian National University in Canberra, where Professor Glyn Davis, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne is speaking on "Irredeemable time: the rising tide of hostility towards universities".

Professor Davis began by recommending "The Making of The Australian National University" (Foster & Varghese, 2009). He then took us back to the dissolution of English monasteries as a pointer as to what governments may do to universities. While Australian universities are not as wealthy as Oxbridge, they still have significant assets.

Professor Davis pointed to US research that a majority of Republicans view universities as a negative influence. He suggested a divide where those with a degree vote left and for internationalism, those without will vote for Donald Trump. I suggest this does not apply to all.

I have noticed a tendency for some of our own Australian entrepreneurs to suggest a university degree is not needed for success (while basing their start-ups on the publicly funded research results from universities and staffed with publicly funded PHDs). In May I visited River City Labs in Brisbane, where founder Steve Baxter seemed a bit ambivalent about the role of universities in innovation.

Professor Davis then looked to the promises made by universities as a cause: students gained a degree, a large debt, but not necessarily a good job. Turning to Australia, he then looked at the current government's view of universities with over-paid VCs and a focus on research.

Professor Davis used the Victorian era railway as an example of technology which made some traders obsolete (such as river fishers in Oxford, despite opposition by the university). The 21st century railway is the Internet, with Silicon Vally setting up low-cost education online. He used the example of Udacity offering nano-qualifications. Professor Davis interpreted this as a development of the distance university. It was interesting he mentioned only US examples, not UK Open University which preceded them (and was in part based on Australia's University of New England).

Professor Davis suggested that universities need to better engage with the community, to show their worth. I suggest they also need to be able to deliver vocationally relevant, low cost sub-degree and nested degree qualifications, with an on-line delivery option.

At question time I admitted I had a degree from an overseas "open" university (which happens to be in the field of designing international education). I asked Professor Davis about the role of private for-profit universities, such as Adelaide's Torrens University of Australia. He pointed at that US based for-profit universities had not been able to displace conventional ones and that traditional institutions had proved adept at providing on-line education (in some cases taking over commercial on-line institutions).

Professor Davis was preaching to the converted, with the ANU VC and two past VCs present. This was an informative, scholarly, but also entertaining and vigorous defence of the university.

Put VET and University on Equal Footing Says Business Council

The Business Council of Australia (BCA) has released a 68 page proposal "Future-Proof: Protecting Australians Through Education and Skills" (October, 2017). This proposes putting the funding of Vocational Education and Training (VET) on an equal footing to university, to address the decline in the vocational sector. BCA point out that university programs attract more government funding and subsidized student loans than for VET. BCA suggest a "Lifelong Skills Account" for each student which can be used for  VET and HE programs, in place of existing loans and subsidies. Also information on jobs and salaries are suggested to help students select courses.

These proposals are worth consideration. However, untangling the current web of state and federal responsibilities for education is not going to be easy. Also the unintended consequences of policies that assume students act in their own long term interests and education providers act ethically, need to be considered. Richard Thaler recently won a Nobel Prize for work on behavioral economics. Perhaps some simple, quick, low risk, small scale "nudge" policies could help achieve reform.

Some simple reforms would be regulations and financial incentives for universities to provide credit to students for courses done at other universities and vocational institutions. At present university will offer such credit, but after the student enrolls, they find that the amount of credit they actually get is very implied. Another reform would be to encourage universities to offer nested qualifications, so a student who has to withdraw after years of study is left with nothing but a debt.

Facilitating Success for Students from Low Socioeconomic Status Backgrounds at Regional Universities

The report "Facilitating Success for Students from Low Socioeconomic Status Backgroundsat Regional Universities" by Marcia Devlin and Jade McKay has been published by Federation University Australia. There are no real surprises in this 110 page report. Some of the suggested areas for policy reform seem a little naive.

The research found eight factors for the success of students:

1. Students’ own attitudes
2. Family support
3. Financial security and sustainability
4. Reliable technology
5. Understanding and responding to the particular circumstances and needs of students
6. Facilitating students being and feeling connected to university
7. Student preparedness for the realities of university study
8. An inclusive, engaged approach to learning and teaching

The authors suggest five areas for work:

1. Ensuring financial stability for students
2. Defining, measuring and monitoring ‘attrition’
3. Valuing staged and micro qualifications
4. Leveraging existing regional and rural infrastructure
5. Regional school investment

We do not need a study to identify that financial security is an issue for students from low a SES background. Also the proposal to ensure financial stability for students would exclude many from higher education.

The proposal for micro-credentials is worthwhile. However the term "micro-credentials" is misleading, as this suggests a credential for a few hours work. What the report appears to be proposing are sub-degree qualifications: certificates and diplomas. These take six months to a year of study. These are not "micro-credentials" and are already allowed for in Australian Higher Education. All that is required is the government funding incentives to implement them.

Government could encourage institutions to implement nested qualifications. That is, students would be able to exit with a qualification after six months or one year and be able to reenter the same program later. Government could encourage this by making it a condition of the funding of degree programs: that is degrees which did not have a nested option would not be funded.
 
Shorter qualification are more common in the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector, than universities. Government funding to encourage students to undertake VET before university would likely improve success rates for low SES students. Many regional universities have co-located VET facilities and this should be relatively easy to implement.

What the report does not seem to address is improving the inclusiveness of higher education, through better course design and use of trained teachers. This is an area where the regional universities have an advantage over the capital city research universities. Cathy Stone's National Guidelines for Improving Student Outcomes in Online Learning  provide a useful set of tips for improving e-learning which are also applicable to campus-based programs.

The report also fails to address the role of e-learning in facilitating success for students. E-learning is normally considered to lower student success, compared to on-campus students. However, e-learning allows students who would otherwise not be able to access higher education at all to participate. E-learning offers a way to provide cost-effective support for students from low SES backgrounds in regional areas.

Completion Rates of Australian Higher Education Students

The Australian Department of Education has issued a report on Completion Rates of Higher Education Students: Cohort Analysis (2016). In response, the Australian Education Minister, Senator Simon Birmingham, issued a media release urging university students to "... research options as completion rates dip" (18 January 2017). This was reported with the headlines such as "Nation of dropouts: University completion rates drop to a new low" (Liz Burke, 18 January 2017). However, I suggest the situation is not that bad and not the fault of the students. Australia's regional universities do not have a low completion rate, but even so there are some simple steps the government could encourage the universities to take to improve it.

The Cohort Analysis found the completion rates were: 39.2% after four years, 45.7% after six years and 73.5% after nine years. This is for a bachelor's degree, which is designed to take three years for a full-time student. Also, the study found that capital city universities had much higher completion rates than regional ones.

Not surprisingly, the Analysis found that part-time students take longer to complete. However, there are very few real "full-time" students. University students do not sit around campus relaxing: they have jobs and family commitments which conflict with their studies.
The Minister "... has urged students to research where they choose to study if they plan to go to university ..." (Media Release, 18 January 2017). This is unfortunate, as the minister seems to be blaming the students. The Minister suggests that the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) website can help students “make the right choice, first time”. However, I tried this website recently and found it of little practical use. In any case, more information will not help to choose between a set of inflexible programs.

Australia needs, I suggest, flexible offerings for students. It is not reasonable to tell students to choose from one of the fixed, three-year degree programs, and expect nothing in their life to change for the next six to nine years. It does not help for the system to label a student who wants to change their studies or has to withdraw due to job or family commitments as a failure.


Students change courses because they learn more about their interests as they study (if students knew everything before they started they would not need to study). Also, students are forced to drop out because the programs do not provide the flexibility which the complexities of life demand. A student who can't attend the campus due to a job change or family commitments is forced to withdraw from their studies.

Students do not use other entry pathways, because they have no way of knowing they will need those pathways, until after they are enrolled in a fixed program in the higher education system.

The minister's suggestion that students look at the reputation of the university they want to attend is not particularly helpful. The completion rates of universities are, to a significant part, not due to the teaching quality of the university, but the circumstances of the students. A student with a job and family commitments in a regional area can't just decide to abandon their job and kids to study in the city.

For the last seven years, I have been a part-time graduate student at two Australian universities (ANU and USQ), a Vocational Education and Training institution (CIT) and a North American on-line open university (Athabasca University). My area of study was education. I have had to read a lot of textbooks and papers on education, including on how to create better degree programs. Also, I have had the pleasure of talking to international and Australian researchers looking at student retention, such as Dr. Cathy Stone at the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education,

It happens I have been a student at one of the Australian universities with the highest completion rate (ANU) and the lowest (USQ). This difference is not due to there being anything wrong with USQ (I thought the courses very good) and is consistent with differences seen around the world. City and regional universities cater to different students, with different needs, resulting in different completion rates.

One thing I learned is that being a student is very hard work and very frustrating. There is no way to know exactly where and what you want to study before you start to study. As I wrote in the Capstone e-Portfolio for my degree:

"... students need support to fit their studies into their lives. This can be through careful course design, giving the student small frequent nudges, scaffolding assignments and allowing them to be based on real-world problems. Also, frequently assessed work is an aid ..."

One of the most useful things I found was being able to supplement campus-based courses at one university (ANU) with on-line courses at another (USQ). Being able to obtain vocational certification (at CIT) based on my university study and work experience was also useful. In North America, I found being able to delay choosing what sort of degree I was doing (coursework or research) until after enrolling and completing introductory courses was very useful. Had I not had that option, I would not have completed my studies successfully and would not have been awarded a degree (today).

There are some steps the Australian government can take to increase completion rates for degrees and in also reduce the cost of unrecoverable student loans. One step would be to encourage universities to offer nested programs and guarantee mutual recognition of courses. A student who has had to suspend studies before completion of a degree should be awarded a sub-degree qualification, not left with a massive debt and nothing to show for it.

Students could receive a certificate after six months, diploma after a year and an advanced diploma after two years, with the option to suspend students at any of these checkpoints and return to complete their degree later. This would reduce the figures for non-completion of degrees as the students who left with a sub-degree would not be counted as non-completions. This would also reduce the student loan cost as students would not fee pressure to continue studies past a checkpoint and so not incur further debt unnecessarily.

A student who has to change institutions should have prior study recognized and not be penalized for the change. A student who wants to supplement their studies with a course at another institution should be free to do so.

Universities should not have arbitrary attendance requirements for courses. Unless a course requires physical attendance, the student should be able to study and undertake assessment on-line. Students should be offered projects and assessment relevant to real world work and have the option to undertake this in the workplace, not on campus.

Universities should require teaching staff to be qualified to teach, and in particular qualified to design and deliver engaging on-line education. There is more to e-learning than just recorded lectures.

Teaching is a skill which needs to be learned. I was a reluctant student of education, thinking that I had already learned all I needed to know the on-line job at one of Australia's (and the world's) learning institutions. However, having been encouraged to study education as a discipline, I found there was much I could learn which not only was beneficial for my students but made teaching less stressful for the teacher.

The Australian Government could encourage measures to reduce non-completion and lower cost through the way it funds institutions directly and through student loans. Government funding could be contingent on the intuitions introducing these measures.

Proposed Reforms for Australian Higher Education

The Australian Parliamentary Library issued a Bills Digest, discussing the proposed changes to VET Student Loans (James Griffiths, 22 November 2016). The changes are to address a blow-out in costs in the Vocational Education and Training Sector. However, I suggest these measures will only be a stop-gap. Australia needs a policy which integrates VET and university sector.

One problem in the university sector is falling completion rates. A way to address this would be to use VET as a transition from school to higher education and as a way to support those who do not have sufficient, or recent, schooling. Currently Australian university have numerous ad-hoc programs to prepare students for university. These should be replaced with a coordinated national VET program.

Another way to address completion rates is with nested courses. Student loans could be limited to small qualification increments, so that students have to complete a vocationally useful qualification, before incurring more debt. Those with no prior HE qualification could be required to complete a six month certificate, before articulating to further studies. Students would then progress with qualifications which did not exceed two two years to complete full time. A typical path would be certificate, diploma or advanced diploma, bachelors degree, masters, and professional doctorate.

One element of VET which could be carried over to the university sector is planning for vocational outcomes. Currently universities can offer courses where there is not clear vocational outcome. An alternative would be to require universities to present evidence to show there are likely to be jobs for future graduates. Such predictions cannot be perfect, but some planning would be better than none at all. Universities and the VET would still be free to offer non-vocational programs, but these would not be eligible for student loan support.

Currently PHD programs are separately funded, for the purposes of advancing research. However, very few of the PHD graduates go on to a career in research. The current PHD funding could be reduced by 80% and the saving used for more direct research support. Students would instead have the option of a vocationally orientated professional doctorate, supported by a loan.

Australian Universities in EdX MicroMasters

Three Australian universities: ANU, Curtin and Queensland, are offering masters level blended courses as part of EdX MicroMasters Programs. 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 EdX courses:

1. Australian National University: Evidence-Based Management
2. Curtin University: Human Rights
3. The University of Queensland: Leadership in Global Development

However, it should be noted that these course are not free and are not pure on-line courses, requiring attendance for a capstone examination. Also the completion rates for such on-line courses is lower than for conventional on-line distance education and campus-based courses.

The completion rate for the EdX MicroMasters could be expected to be less than 1%. Rather than a low cost university program, the MicroMasters could be seen as a form of extended for-fee university entrance examination. Rafael Reif, MIT President, is quoted as saying EdX MicroMasters is "an experiment in what I call inverted admissions. Anybody anywhere can try to take those courses online."

Under the Australian Qualifications Framework, the EdX MicroMasters is closest to a Graduate Certificate, as part of a nested qualification. The use of the term "Masters" is misleading and may not comply with Australian law.