The Australian government has announced $128M for4,001 STEM students with skills needed for the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine project. It should be noted most of the training, and jobs, will not be related to nuclear technology. The initial submarines will be purchased built from the USA and largely supported by US personnel. In my opinion, it is unlikely the followup AUKUS submarines will ever be built. By that time conventionally armed crewed submarines will have been rendered obsolete by drones. However the STEM skills the graduates learn in these courses will be critical to designing and building drone submarines as part of the evolved and expanded AUKUSJSK.
Professor Andrew Norton has criticized the level of funding, as it assumes a 25% attrition rate per year. He points out this is higher than is typical. This may reflect the demand for skills in industry. Universities may have difficulty keeping students in the program, when they could be earning in industry after only completing part of the program, especially those in the AUKUS courses who will be required to meet security vetting requirements. One approach would be to have nested work integrated programs, where students study while working on AUKUS, with their work being submitted for assessment. Students could complete the first part of the program, and be awarded a qualification to get them an entry level job. They would be then study while working for a promotion.
In a speech to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering, Professor
Brian Schmidt, Australian National University Vice Chancellor is reported to have said:
“We are the only country in the world crazy enough to prop up our sovereign research capability with international funds. It produces huge distortions and vulnerabilities in our higher education system."
I suggest this could be addressed with an Australian Sovereign Research Wealth Fund. International student fees would be treated as a windfall, with a levy applied. The levy would go into the central research fund. This would be invested in developing the results of Australian research. The earnings from the fund would be distributed as competitive grants to universities.
The levy would be calculated at a level which would allow university to retain a proportion of the surplus from international student fees. This could be set at a 75% share for universities initially, reducing to 25% over ten years.
It might be argued that taking away most of the revenue from international students would be a disincentive for universities to have them. But a university would still be receiving a reasonable return on each student. Also it could be argued that this is the government profiting from the hard work of universities. But the money would be going back to universities in the form of research grants. Also it is not the quality of individual institutions which attracts students, as Australia as a desirable destination.
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).
A move to open access research publishing will need, I suggest, a well
resourced information campaign, and a well staffed anti-fraud unit.
European and UK research funding bodies have decided to move to open access publishing by 2020. As a condition of receiving funding researchers will be required to publish papers from that research where they are available free. The researchers will be provided with finding to pay for publication. However, it is likely that some academics and publishers will attempt to game the new
system, placing public money and the integrity of research at risk.
In 2014 the Australian Government expanded student loans from universities to non-government vocational and educational
training (VET) colleges. A 2015 Parliamentary inquiry heard "... harrowing and concerning
evidence of misconduct by private VET providers ...". Education providers, and brokers, offered students inducements such as laptops to sign up for courses. This came at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars to the Australian community and harmed the reputation of Australian vocational education.
Similar scams are likely with open access publishing, unless controls are in place from the start of the scheme. Academics are under pressure to publish and will be tempted to accept inducements from publishers and brokers, to place their business with them. We will likely see offers of free equipment and trips in return for publishing. We are also likely to see offers to the heads of research organizations for all research by their staff to be directed to one publisher in return for favorable treatment.
It should be made clear to publishers and researchers from the outset that offering, or accepting, cash and gifts in return for publishing is a crime. It should be made clear there are trained criminal investigators looking for such behavior and those responsible with be prosecuted.
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.
Worryingly for Australian universities, this week the Australian
Government released a discussion paper questioning if so many students
need a university degree to get a job. In "Driving Innovation, Fairness and Excellence in Australian Higher Education", the government is considering if
it should fund cheaper sub-bachelor programs:
"A sub-bachelor course leading to a diploma, advanced diploma or associate degree can also offer a recognised qualification that leads to rewarding jobs and careers, as well as providing a potential pathway to further study at bachelor level and beyond." from Australian Government, p.
11, 2016)
I suggest that this could be extended further to include certificates (about half a diploma, six months full time study). On its own a certificate is sufficient for some jobs and is also a useful complement to a qualification in another field.
A hot topic in Australia at present (and I
assume elsewhere) is the employability of university graduates and if
they have work ready skills. Ramadi, Ramadi and Nasr (2016) looked at
the gap between what engineering graduates learn and what industry
expects of them. This looks very scientific with t-tests and graphs, but it is still a measurement of the opinion of industry as to what graduates should be able to do, not what they actually need to be able to do.
The Australian Taxation Office monitors the salaries of graduates as
part of the student loans scheme and so has very detailed quantitative
data as to what salaries graduates get. The universities have measures
of course quality, including what employers say they want, but if the
result is not a higher paying job (or any job), then this is unlikely to be
convincing for government.
Paper Fails to Consider Online Learning
Like the Australian government's recent "National Strategy for International Education 2025", the discussion paper fails to sufficiently consider the effect online education will have on Australian universities in the next five to ten years. "Online" is mentioned in the discussion paper only once, with reference to learning:
"We need to do more to raise student aspiration and reduce the barriers that regional and remote students face to enter the higher education system– whether at an institution in their region, in their capital city, or online." (p. 13)
In contrast the discussion paper mentions "campuses" three times. This is out of proportion with how students study now and how they will study in the future. The typical student will need to be on campus for about 20% of their studies, or about one day a week.
Already most Australian university students have made the transition to on-line study, but this is being masked by the label "blended learning". What has happened is that more than half of students are no longer attending lectures. Universities are catering for this with a primitive form of e-leaning using recordings of live lectures. However, most courses are not specifically designed for on-line delivery and most university staff are not qualified to design or deliver such courses. By the time the Australian Government discovers that on-line delivery is a cost effective option, it may be too late for Australian Universalities to reequip and re-skill to provide this and the government will have to fund imported on-line programs, turning the current education export industry into a multi-billion dollar purchase of overseas education service and products.
Ramadi, E., Ramadi, S., &
Nasr, K. (2016). Engineering graduates’ skill sets in the MENA region: a
gap analysis of industry expectations and satisfaction. European Journal of Engineering Education, 41(1), 34-52.
In "Universities are losing their sense of public responsibility and social purpose" (The Guardian, 6 January 2015), Professor Peter Scott writes "... we seem to be increasingly losing our sense of public responsibility and wider social purpose ...". He may feel that his institution, University College London (UCL), is losing its sense of public responsibility, but he does not necessarily speak for other academics.
Professor Scott seems to be attributing this perceived loss of public responsibility to the need for not-for-profit universities to compete with for-profit institutions. However, universities have been competing with each other, and with other for-profit educational and research organizations, for hundreds of years.
Universities can't avoid being "entrepreneurial", as they are in the business of organizing and operating educational and research activities. Unless Professor Scott is proposing that education and research should only be carried out by independently wealthy individuals, then someone, somehow has to pay for these activities. Education and research can be paid for by the state, by public donations, by students, by licensing intellectual property, or more likely, by a mix of these. Someone, somehow has to decide which institutions get how much money. This can be decided by fiat, through some rule based process (by a bureaucracy), through market forces, or more likely a mix of these.
If Professor Scott doesn't like the way his university is run, then as a professor he has the opportunity to seek to have his institution change its ways. A university with less bureaucracy, an emphasis on education for broad social benefit and long term society benefit certainly sounds attractive. Perhaps Professor Scott needs to look to what other institutions, in other countries are doing. He will find there are universities which look to long term social benefit and try to minimize bureaucracy.
UCL is contributing to new and interesting educational initiatives. One of these is UCL Australia, which shares a building in Adelaide with Carnegie Mellon University Australia and Torrens University Australia (part of Laureate International Universities). Australian rules for the registration of universities makes it difficult to establish a flexible on-line institution. UCL, CMU and Laureate appear to have found a way through these regulations, which will hopefully be to the benefit of Australian higher education.
Jarod Alper and others at the Australian National University have created a "University Degree Comparison Calculator", to allow the cost of a university degree under current legislation to be compared with that proposed. The assumptions used in the calculations can be changed. What will be most informative for users is the graph showing the large proportion which interest makes of a student loan repayment. Perhaps this should by included in the Government's MyUniversity website.
One thing the authors of the calculator might like to do is extend the calculation to shorter qualifications: Certificate (six months) and Diploma (one year). Students might be better off starting with a much shorter (and cheaper) qualification, just enough to get the into a industry and then study for a degree part-time. Many young students have little idea of what they want to do and so it would be better to invest six months or a year of their time and money in studying in a filed, rather than three or four years, before finding out if it is what they want to do. Also I find student who have work experience are much more motivated, ready to learn and easier to teach. It may even be possible to offer such students lower course fees, as it will take less resources to teach them (and they can even help teach the beginners).
