The future of tertiary education: Australia and beyond

Across the world, participation in post-secondary education is increasing. As one example, the number of school leavers, who enrolled in a tertiary education course in Australia, is said to be the majority of the cohort. Most young people will now undertake some form of tertiary education in their journey from school to the workforce. The demands of changing careers and re-skilling requirements suggest that tertiary education sector has an even broader role in our lives. This means that tertiary education sectors have an increasingly complex demands placed on them. They must set young people up on the trajectories they will follow into the labour market and many of us will continue to return to tertiary education sector throughout our working lives.

But it is not clear that our education systems have kept up with changing demands. Many tertiary education sectors still operate on a model that has been largely unchanged since 1950s, with undergraduate degrees, apprenticeships for some occupations and underperforming vocational sectors. Australia is an example of a system where growth in participation has been concentrated at degree level. Census data shows that the growth in participation rates has been almost entirely at university level over the past forty years.

This is a major problem. The effectiveness of our tertiary education sectors relies on a diversity of offerings. University degrees have effectively cannibalised other parts of the education system. The privileged status of university degrees, fuelled by their association with higher level jobs and great salaries, have left other parts of the tertiary education system underdeveloped and underutilised.

A key to responding to future challenges is understanding and unpicking the role Vocational Education, including Higher Vocational Education plays within these tertiary systems. The interaction between vocational and technical education and higher education is being discussed globally as a solution to skill gaps and labour market requirements. International insights into innovative delivery modes about how vocational, technical education and higher spaces are developing around the world are necessary. The articles in this special issue provide novel insights which advance knowledge and understanding of vocational education and training (VET) and higher education in Australia and internationally by conceptualising how the tertiary field is responding to massification and the future of work.

The special issue takes Australia as its foci, but the articles provide nuanced picture within and between tertiary systems globally. In doing so they illustrate the complex interplay between policy and practice, and structural conditions that effect the implementation and operationalisation of VET and HE in tertiary systems internationally. The articles comprising this issue illustrate the real impact policy reforms have of the experiences of teachers, students and stakeholder of VET and tertiary education. Attention is paid to curriculum, progression between HE and VET systems and teacher expertise. The articles draw conclusions that have broader societal implications, including access and equity, social mobility and labour market and economic relations.

In the prologue to this special issue The Tertiary Transformation Imperative: Issues and Opportunities, Kift (2024) introduces key issues and challenges facing tertiary education. She problematises the tensions and competing interests of tertiary systems often characterised by the binary divide between VET and HE. This comprehensive account foregrounds the issues addressed in the articles contributing to this special issue, including the complexity of the qualification landscape in tertiary systems, pathways to and between VET and HE, and issues of curriculum. The effect of policy reform taking Australia as its focus, demonstrates how policy makers are influencing tertiary systems, as does the first article in the issue.

Regulation Theory and the Reform of Vocational Education in New Zealand (Strathdee, 2024) provides a historical account of vocational reform and a critical policy analysis of Reform of Vocational Education (RoVE) in New Zealand specifically, by drawing upon Marxist-based regulation theory to understand capitalist structures have shaped vocational education. They reveal how competing logic and ideological approaches, related to how vocational education and work/labour are structured, shapes the tertiary system in New Zealand and what implications this has for vocational education locally and regionally.

In Tertiarization and academization of Vocational Education and Training in China and Germany (Li et al., 2024), the authors analyse the continued transformation of the relationship between higher education and vocational education in tertiary systems in China and Germany. Specifically, they focus on the notions of ‘tertiarization’ whereby ‘VET programmes are upgraded to tertiary level but not given academic status’ with a view to enhancing the status of VET and its parity with higher education (Li et al., 2024). Revealing a diverse VET landscape in both countries, the article contributes to understanding the challenges that are still being faced by tertiary and HE systems with lateral and vertical permeability. This has implications for learners and their needs with regards to lifelong learning and social mobility more broadly.

Similarly, comparative in nature, Policies and Practices of Technical and Vocational Education and Training Pathways into Higher Education in Bangladesh: Lessons from Australian (Kabir & Ahmed, 2024) takes Bangladesh as its case, examining what access to HE looks like for graduates for TVET. Their analysis of Bangladeshi tertiary and HE systems in comparison to Australian systems using content analysis of policy documents offers a nuanced understanding of the intersection of vocational and higher education pathways in both countries. Using Marginson’s (2018) concepts of High Participation Systems of HE they unpick how economic, sociocultural, and political contexts shape approaches to elite, mass and universal systems of HE (Trow, 1973) and thus pave ways from VET.

Addressing another key part of tertiary education in relation the divide between higher and vocational education, Curriculum across the great divide: Exploring a key problem of Australian tertiary education (Hodge et al., 2024) looks at the distinctiveness of curriculum between VET and HE in the Australian tertiary system. Whilst discussing the complexity of the tertiary system, in terms of pathways and qualifications, the authors note the division of VET and HE within it as being problematic. Their analysis argues that articulation between the two systems is necessary for a renewal of VET and HE that is more fit for purpose for all stakeholders. The VET curriculum is problematised in terms of how it is conceived and practiced revealing how it is shaped by politics and resulting policies.

And offering a perspective in relation to pedagogy and practice, Experiences from great tertiary change in China – a teacher perspective (Bailey et al., 2024), takes a deep dive into the experiences of teachers recently trained as secondary VET teachers within the Higher Education system in China. They set out the complex policy context for VET and education systems in China and explore how these structural conditions effect the practices of vocational teachers. The authors present a case study of how vocational teachers have experienced great tertiary changes in relation to the aims of policy to align vocational and higher education. The article theorises these experiences using the notion of vocational capital and reveal how a misalignment between teacher’s academic education and vocational expertise impacts the quality of VET teaching and learning and thus contributes to a reinforcement of the long-standing, lower status position of VET within China’s tertiary system.

The contributions to each of this special issue take a deep dive into aspects of tertiary and vocational education systems globally, and in doing so reveal how competing logic and ideological approaches to how vocational education, higher education and work/labour are structured shape such systems internationally.