Serving capital – comment by CEO Craig Robertson

This title may have Marxists turning in their grave but I assure you this article is not about the political economy, although my inner-nerd is tempted (having noticed the rise of democratic socialism …. but that’s for another day).

Several months ago the world was aghast as they saw flames shooting through the roof of the Notre Dame on the banks of the Seine in Paris. We were all concerned about the fate of antiquities inside but more so for the future of the Cathedral itself. Imagine Parisians’ dread contemplating it being razed.

The Cathedral plays a key role in the psyche of France – as a symbol of its Catholic roots, the site of the coronation of Napoleon and beatification of Joan of Arc and as refuge of the fictional Quasimodo.

With so much cultural and social capital – intangible, even fanciful for rationalists – could you imagine the furore if the government contemplated demolishing it and putting up a bright shiny modern edifice in the spirit of efficiency and outcomes.

Capital, hard and soft, is ignored at peril. Australians intrinsically understand it. Most of us hanker for our own residence as security and a symbol of success. We also know the value of intangibles such as information in this knowledge-driven world, and place huge store on our reputation in the workplace as our own intrinsic capital.

It’s curious then when it comes to vocational education why we so readily risk the capital stock – physical, personnel and social – of TAFE.

If we were building vocational education from scratch what would we do? Basic theory tells us the capital market wouldn’t build it because there’s no tangible return as it resides in the enhanced capability of the graduate, and you can’t repossess that if loans are not repaid!

Well, we do have vocational education and there’s been a long history of public investment in TAFEs to address what private effort wont. It’s curious why bureaucrats insist on calling it a market. We also continue the folly of the power of consumer (student) choice. The prospective student needs to learn about the career and industry they are wanting to enter, so how are they placed to make wise decisions in the sea of courses, let alone be assigned the task to assess how well the sector is doing in quality of delivery?

If, as we are told, the future of work and enterprise is such that students may move through several careers in numerous jobs, many of which don’t yet exist, why do we place so much confidence in a set of competencies which, by design, can only define today’s jobs? Why is it that a bunch of outcome statements define vocational education in the hope the market will pick up course design and delivery, when we know it has a bias to high-volume, low-capital single-focus courses?

If the system is to rebuild to support Australia’s economic future in this uncertain world it makes perfect sense for governments to rebuild off the stock – the capability and capacity – of TAFEs before it’s too late. It’s logical they do that with agencies they own. This way government itself can learn from TAFEs to develop their stock of policies and initiatives for spillover to other training organisations and to help build new industry. This is the starting point of TAFEs as anchor institutions recommended by Anne Jones and others at the LH Martin Institute.[1] This is the rational approach for governments when the market is not a viable, nor safe, as they have seen firsthand.

This doesn’t equate to monopoly because that doesn’t end well either. It’s fair for governments to expect the best in education practice and responsiveness to students and industry. A blend of delivery organisations is sound.

On the other hand, to expect a bank of centrally controlled, tightly regulated qualifications to deliver contemporary practice is not sound. Relying on the stock of (backward looking) competencies controlled in Canberra in the blind faith someone in the VET market will be able to prepare people for new industry and new technology with students doing the quality control sounds more like a ponzi scheme than solid government policy.

This week in Brisbane we are celebrating the power of TAFE – the base load of the VET world. Surely economic rationalists understand that notion. There may be some costs to governments but brown‑outs and black-outs in the form of skill shortages from the alternative is too high a price to pay in order to protect an ideology.

In case my non-TAFE colleagues are tempted to liken TAFEs to the antiquities and gargoyles of Notre Dame, think again. My point is we need to leverage TAFE soft capital.

What governments discard their capital in the hope a market will solve what are wicked policy problems?

It’s no surprise that state governments have won elections on the back of their commitment to TAFEs. Voters may ignore electioneering, but they easily sense when a community asset is being trashed for the sake of an ideology.

It’s sound election winning policy as well to leverage the stock it has at hand in TAFE to build the capacity of the economy for the future.