An ideas package to get skills growth through equity and new knowledge

Mary O'Kane chairs the Universities Accord panel.

It’s been a fascinating few days reading and listening to feedback on the Australian Universities Accord interim report since its release last week by Education Minister Jason Clare.

We were somewhat startled to read that we had made a large number of recommendations – by some accounts more than 75. Actually, the report has only five recommendations – all for imm­ediate action.

It then canvases 12 packages of ideas on how Australia’s higher-education sector can contribute significantly to important national needs. (Yes, yes, I know, I should’ve made it clearer in the introduction!)

The packages derive from the review’s terms of reference. They include three big issues of interconnected national needs: skills, equity and new knowledge. There are also others that support these three but are more focused on higher education.

Take equity, for example. A lot of good work has been done in the past to address this issue, yet it has been persistently difficult to solve.

Whitlam, Dawkins and Gillard all tried, as the minister noted in his speech, but success eludes us. How do we get more disadvantaged Australians not just into higher education but successfully through their courses of choice and into great jobs?

The Accord panel suggests a multi-pronged approach – a package of tightly coupled ideas that includes building aspiration to go on to higher education, facilitating admission, providing better learning support, and helping secure work placement and part-time employment – potentially through a jobs broker.

It also includes minimising financial and other barriers to successful student access, partic­ipation and completion, including revised student contribution amounts and improved living-support arrangements.

We can’t fail on the equity issue this time – in addition to it enabling a more fair and just society, we won’t be able meet Australia’s future skills and workforce needs without significantly greater participation and attainment by equity groups.

For skills, the panel proposes a broad package of ideas to improve the way they are developed, described and recognised within a more integrated tertiary education system.

This includes a universal learning entitlement, enabling greater student mobility by way of a national skills passport, better recognition of prior learning, more industry involvement in course design, paid placement, more work-integrated learning, and increasing the availability of portable and stackable skills, through microcredentials, to promote lifelong learning.

A highly productive economy needs leading-edge knowledge as well as top level skills.

And while Australian universities are impressive research performers in international terms – good at solving hard problems with the new knowledge they produce – industry and government do not draw on this research and problem-solving capability as heavily as they might to solve their problems and drive innovation.

For universities, a further complication is that their research funding base is insecure, being quite dependent on income from international students. The panel has put forward a package of ideas to address these two roadblock issues with a view to enabling a robustly funded university research system that becomes a core driver in our economy.

To deliver on these interconnected areas of national need – equity, skills and new knowledge – we also offer packages of ideas on how the higher education needs to function.

We cover putting First Nations at the heart of the system, setting targets, learning and teaching, international education, the contribution of higher education to our communities, the connection between higher education and vocational education and training, and how the Accord will work. As well, we address the funding, quality control and governance foundations upon which our higher education system is built.

The panel welcomes all feedback on the interim report. Debate on the packages of ideas proposed is vitally important, and we look forward to continued discussion that reflects the full breadth and depth of stakeholder opinion.

Which ideas should stay in? Which should be modified? Which should go? Which ideas are a must-have, and which are nice to have? What is urgent and what is not so? Is anything missing?

This feedback will inform our final recommendations (far less than 75!) due in December, to ensure Australian higher education is optimised to deliver on areas of national need and to help us achieve the quality of life we aspire to.

Mary O’Kane is chairwoman of the Universities Accord Review Panel. You can make a submission to the Australian Universities Accord Interim Report. Submissions close on 1 September 2023, 11:59pm. The Final Report of the Australian University Accord is due December 2023.