Streamline credit – but do not increase the input costs – comment by CEO Jenny Dodd

The Productivity Commission’s recent report, Building a skilled and adaptable workforce, misses an opportunity to recommend significant changes to credit transfer and, in fact, imposes high costs into the tertiary education sector.

In TDA’s April 2023 response to the Universities Accord (www.tda.edu.au) as one of TDA’s TEN big ideas, we recommended that a TAFE Diploma should be automatic credit for first year of an aligned degree. It is important to remember here that this would be first year of an aligned degree, not the equivalent of one year of a degree.

One year of a degree does not shorten the timeframe for a student – generally all it does is shave off electives and students still must fulfill all the requirements of time served in the degree.

In the Productivity Commission’s report, they recommend that the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC) should build a national database of academic credit decisions. However, what that recommendation fails to understand is the continuous process every TAFE must undertake with every university they partner with each time a training package was to change. The consistent updates to training packages would mean the cost of maintaining such a database would be exorbitant.

Additionally, the Productivity Commission may not realise that for many universities there is little financial incentive to encourage students to enter a year two or later.  Unless there are deliberate financial rewards that recognise TAFE pathways, this is unlikely to change.

It is also important to note that there have been many attempts by TAFEs and universities to pursue credit transfer arrangements. I refer, for example, to the 2006 Beyond Articulation: a sustainable model for collaboration between Canberra Institute of Technology and University of Canberra project. One of the five outcomes was “a dynamic and user-friendly Web-based articulation information environment to provide information for students and staff on choices, opportunities, options and pathways.” This was a significant piece of work in its development, but sustainability and currency became issues.

TDA continues to promote a more systematic model for credit transfer. One that does not involve expensive databases and one that incentivises harmonisation by giving universities financial rewards for pathways with TAFEs. Perhaps not all universities would participate, but for the willing it would be a significant low-cost solution. TAFEs could work together to achieve this outcome with a collection of universities.