In 2015 there were 1 million Australians studying in higher education courses and 4.4 million studying in vocational education courses.
What do these figures, which excluded international students, tell you about the relative importance of these two sectors of education, which both prepare people who have finished school for their careers?
Admittedly, there are many more part-time students in the vocational sector, where part-timers number 80 per cent as opposed to 29 per cent part-time in higher education. But even allowing for this, it's obvious that vocational education (officially called vocational education and training or VET) is of at least equal, if not higher importance to the economy than higher education.
So why do we hear so much about higher education in the public debate on education and relatively little about vocational education, except when a scandal like the VET FEE-HELP student loans mess attracts attention? We seem to have it in our heads that what universities do plays a far more crucial role in educating Australia's workforce than what happens in vocational education.
A new report with a lengthy name from the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) helps explain why this is the case. The title, The boundaries and connections between the VET and higher education sectors: 'confused, contested and collaborative', explains the problem.
Authored by Craig Fowler, NCVER's managing director, the report points out that government reforms in recent years have "travelled 'different paths' " in dealing with vocational education and higher education. "Or at least [they] were implemented without deliberately dealing with sectoral intersections," it said.
In other words government has dropped the ball. Education policies, particularly those from Canberra, have not ensured that the two sectors complement each other. They don't make it easy for students to progress from vocational education to a higher-level university course.
The report also explains where some of the failures have been. "The historic Bradley review [the 2009 higher education review led by Denise Bradley] proposed a more integrated tertiary education sector, but this was neither fully embraced nor since implemented," it said.
It also noted the view that the major higher education reform of the Rudd-Gillard governments – which introduced the demand-driven system (that removed the quota for subsidised university places) and boosted university enrolments – had given greater market power to universities compared to other education providers.
It quotes Victoria University's Ann Jones saying that "chaos" has resulted from the "dissonant sets of competing qualifications" at the sub-degree level, which sits on the boundary between vocational and higher education.
On the one hand there are diploma-level qualifications on the higher education track, but they sit alongside vocational qualifications at the same level. Professor Jones believes the latter sell students short.
"With few exceptions [eg nursing] VET diplomas and advanced diplomas seem to prepare graduates for jobs that they will not get and fail to prepare them to articulate into the higher education qualifications to which many of them aspire," she said.
What can be done? Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham is currently working on a new package of higher education changes to be announced in coming months. He's had plenty of advice that he needs to do more to integrate vocational education with university-level education. This is his chance to introduce reforms that will make his mark on education and leave something of lasting value.
