NSW Skills Minister and university Vice-Chancellors co-sign new strategy to advance TAFE-uni hybrid
For years, school leavers in Victoria have had the opportunity to get academic credit for TAFE qualifications at uni while NSW kids have missed out. Finally, that could all be about to change.
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Nursing and manufacturing could soon be in the state government’s sights for a revolution in higher education that would blend university and TAFE qualifications.
Meanwhile, the boss of Western Sydney University has warned without urgent reform NSW kids will continue missing out on opportunities Victorian students have had for years.
NSW Skills and TAFE Minister Steve Whan will work with the state’s 11 public universities to make it easier for students with vocational qualifications in key areas to gain academic credit for their work at TAFE, rather than be forced to start a degree from scratch.
Launching the ‘Public Partnerships for Public Benefit 2025-2029’ strategy at UNSW earlier this week, Mr Whan said transitioning between the two forms of tertiary education should be a lot “smoother and quicker” in order to ease the state’s skills shortage.
“At the moment each university does its own accreditation, and TAFE is bound up in a very complex national system of accreditation,” he said.
“Other sectors have dual sector universities, and we don’t have that in NSW.”
Western Sydney University Vice Chancellor George Williams said NSW students are currently “missing out” on an advantage other Australian school leavers have had for years.
Williams will pitch nursing and manufacturing as areas ripe for reform amid “critical needs and massive shortages” in Sydney’s west.
“So many of our campuses have TAFEs right next door and yet we’re like ships passing in the night,” he said.
“We have to recognise prior learning pathways across TAFE and university … it should be straightforward to move from being an electrician to an engineer.
“Why are our people in New South Wales missing out on something Victoria has in spades?”
University of Newcastle boss and convener of the NSW Vice-Chancellors Committee Alex Zelinsky commended the government’s new strategy and said the state’s “world class universities” are ready to “back (it) in”.
It is understood data scientists, project managers and employees in the renewables sector will be first off the blocks while changes to other job qualifications will require negotiation between the government and trade unions.
The bid to bring together vocational qualifications and university degrees comes amid a nationwide push to get more school leavers into higher education, with 15.9 million jobs to require some kind of tertiary qualification by 2050.
UNSW students Rifah Tamanna, Jennifer Amponsah, Maixence Williams and Harsheen Purewal agreed there is too much “stigma” associated with choosing TAFE over university.
Civil engineering student Rifah said she was questioned by her peers for undertaking the vocational engineering studies course during her HSC year, rather than “an actual course”.
Third year psychology and commerce student Harsheen said attitudes are “definitely changing”, with her high school peers in the graduating class of 2022 having considered a broader range of post-school destinations
“At our careers fair TAFE had a massive stall, and a lot of people were going ‘oh, I can start my degree later, I don’t have to go straight out of high school into uni’,” she said.
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