More of us are getting on the tools at TAFE

While university enrolments are still higher, TAFE students are inching closer.

Credit: The Inspired Unemployed.

While university enrolments are still higher, TAFE students are inching closer.

More students are shunning university in favour of TAFE, likely looking to reskill during the pandemic.

TAFE and private training colleges (known as vocational education) enrolled 177,000 more students last year than they did in 2016, according to Census data released on Tuesday.

During the pandemic tradies hired twice as many apprentices as they did in the Before Times thanks to a Morrison government subsidy of up to half of an apprentice's wage, and thousands more wanted to reskill.

University enrolments remained stable, with just 25,000 more students than in 2016, when the last Australian census took place. Overall, university enrolments almost those of double vocational education students.

Professor of Higher education at UniMelb's Centre for the Study of Higher Education Sophia Arkoudis said it was likely a result of people seeking to reskill during the pandemic.

"One theory is that during the pandemic people were laid off and had to try hard to find a new career. The pathway TAFE offers is affordable and quicker reskill," she said.

"Also in an economic downturn, because courses at TAFE ... do not have as high fees, people might be looking to access it as a pathway for higher education later on ... It's a very viable pathway into higher education."

Professor Arkoudis said universities probably retained a similar number of students because they couldn't do anything else with their time, so they "knuckled down and went to uni". 

"People couldn’t travel or do things students would normally do, like have a gap year, and so on. Their options were cut off for two years," she said.

Last month, WA Premier Mark McGowan announced the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector had experienced a major surge - recording the highest ever enrollments. Student enrolments were up 21% from 2020. 

A recent report by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) also found more than a quarter of Australian employers (27.4 %) have an apprentice or traineeship, which is the highest figure since 2011. 94% of these trade apprentice graduates found jobs.