The tertiary transformation imperative: issues and opportunities

In some countries such as the UK and Australia, there is a sharp divide between ‘higher education’ and vocational or further education which have markedly different accreditation, quality assurance, funding, and relations with government, which is institutionalised and entrenched by being organised into different sectors.

Wheelahan and Moodie (2020, p. 103)

As Wheelahan and Moodie (2020, p. 103) called out in their prologue to the last special issue of this journal, the ‘sharp divide’ between the higher education (HE) and vocational education and training (VET) sectors remains entrenched in some countries, including Australia, militating against future of learning and work demands for a connected, cohesive and harmonised postsecondary system. This needs to change. It is patently not an inclusive, learner-centric approach to education and training. It does not speak to the new and future skills needs of learner-earners and employers, and results in ad hoc training ‘work arounds’. It does not serve national aspirations for fairness, social cohesion and prosperity in the face of seismic economic, social, environmental and technological change. And it hinders progress towards the universal policy imperative that lifelong learning must become a practical reality for all citizens.

As we emerge from the pandemic, the opportunities presented by a connected tertiary education offer is attracting global attention. Though the imperative to supplant the HE-VET binary with post-secondary harmony has been around for decades, the current urgency of coalescing (inter)national priorities seems more cogent than ever before. A confluence of triggers has prompted renewed effort to bridge the sectoral divide that perpetuates the non-system. These triggers include: international skills shortages; demographic and geopolitical shifts; the impact of technology adoption; globalisation; the need to transition to clean energy; and the demands of a more caring and creative workforce and society. As a result, nations are now assiduously grappling with the wicked problem of building an adaptive and responsive educational ecosystem that prioritises the acquisition of conceptual and technical knowledge, the development of industry-specific and transferable skills, and one that recognises and credits individuals’ prior learning and experience with greater permeability and portability. Underpinning International efforts also is an enabling focus on strengthening articulation and multidirectional pathways across all sectors and types of learning acquisition (formal, non-formal and informal) (United Nations, 2020, p. 3).

Post-secondary education and training [must be] conceived and redesigned as a diverse set of offerings, available through better linkages and pathways between the VET and higher education sectors. These linkages and pathways will no longer be linear and hierarchical; they will need to recognise that throughout adulthood, people need to develop new skills in different areas and at different levels. Central to this objective is reinvigorating the VET system and raising its standing. (Noonan et al., 2019, p. 8)

Addressing the future of learning and its credentialing in a transformed tertiary system requires policy coherence and integrated holism to align a complex matrix of disparate agendas. In Australia, some agendas are now unifying. There have been concurrent reviews into childcare and early childhood learning, national school reform, VET qualification reform and for an Australian Universities Accord. A new National Skills Agreement has been negotiated, a national Employment White Paper has been released and legislation has passed establishing a new Jobs and Skills Australia agency that will provide evidence-based advice on current, emerging and future labour market, skills and training needs and priorities, including ‘pathways into VET and pathways between VET and higher education’ (Jobs and Skills Australia Act 2022, section 9(1)(v)).

Having canvassed the climate for ecosystemic change, this prologue will discuss the opportunities for and issues impeding cross-sector harmonisation and then examine an innovative revisioning of core enabling policy architecture – the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) – for its potential contribution to the significant step-change required for a transformed, learner-centric tertiary system.

A connected tertiary sector: harmonisation’s issues and opportunities

The need to build a single, connected tertiary system is well understood and frequently exhorted, with calls for VET and HE to collaborate for the elimination of ‘cultural barriers’ that militate against the best of both sectors ontributing as ‘distinct but equally important parts of the skills development system’. (Department of Education, 2023, p. 58).

Many students move between higher education and vocational education throughout their lives to enhance, broaden and update their knowledge and skills. Pathways between vocational education and training and higher education are currently fragmented and misaligned, making navigation across sectors very difficult. Admission, credit transfer and recognition of prior learning practices are inconsistent and can act as a barrier to further study. These transitions should be made as seamless as possible (Department of Education, 2024, p. 91). (Department of Education, 2024, p. 91)

But challenges extend beyond ‘cultural barriers’ of parity of esteem and collaborative will. The dual sector schism is deeply entrenched, historically, structurally and politically, causing reform efforts frequently to falter. In Australia, the HE-VET binary is rendered particularly stark given the two sectors’ very distinct types of provision and highly differentiated offers. VET’s history is one of technically-specific, competency-based training, prescriptively aligned to existing occupations and trades. HE’s academic tradition is focussed on conceptual, advanced-level knowledge and inquiry-based learning, albeit often with a professional education focus. These differences in purpose and objectives reach deep into curriculum, pedagogy, delivery and assessment design, and are reflected in accreditation standards, regulatory regimes and teacher qualification requirements.

Reform complexity has been exacerbated further in Australia by the absence of strong intergovernmental cooperation in a federated system that has led to incoherent bifurcation across policy, funding, student support provision and regulatory regimes. Employers and learners seeking to understand best-fit, entry-level qualifications, and engage with up- and re-skilling options, must negotiate the two disjuncted sectors, a dizzying array of private provider offerings and, for VET, eight distinct state and territory systems. Across and between sectors, issues exist regarding ease of credit transfer, recognition of prior learning and experience (RPL/E), flexible entry and credentialled exit points, and the quality assurance, portability and potential stackability of micro-credentials (Noonan et al., 2019). The different ways in which learning outcomes are defined and expressed add to credit transfer issues that the current AQF cannot surmount (Ithaca Group, 2018). Although the AQF is common to both sectors, it serves mainly to reinforce perceptions of VET’s lower (hierarchical) status and cements the devaluing of skills acquisition by locating qualifications that favour skills attainment over knowledge towards the bottom of the AQF ladder.

Pathways are particularly problematic. The disconnect between sectors renders post-secondary pathways opaque, inflexible, ‘linear and hierarchical’ (Noonan et al., 2019, p. 8). At the secondary education interface, students choosing between vocational and academic futures must manage perceptions of VET’s lower status; ‘a less- or non-preferred post-school option’ (Billett et al., 2020, p. 270). While pathways exist between the sectors – from VET to HE and HE to VET – they are far from seamless, systematic or well aligned. ‘Places, pathways, credit for prior learning and articulation … are fragmented across different institutions, levels of government, industries and places’ (Department of Education, 2023, pp. 32–33). As Hodge and Knight (2021) found, there are very few Australian examples of highly integrated programs that leverage the best of each sector. Moreover, there is ‘confusion and contestation’ at the sector boundaries, where ‘perceptions of the separateness of the two sectors seem heightened’ for mid-level qualifications offered by both VET and HE (Hodge & Knight, 2021, p. 27).

Innovation is not easy. Bean and Dawkins (2021, p. 12) recently recommended that HE providers partner with industry to develop ‘cadetship programs’ for higher/degree apprenticeships that combine an

… employment contract and a learning program, including short ‘transition to work’ and ‘career-change’ cadetships (with micro-credentials) and ‘sandwich course’ cadetships (as part of a degree), along with longer, multi-year cadetships. (with diplomas, associate degrees, or degrees)

Unfortunately, structural impediments have worked against realising this type of learning-integrated-work at scale in the Australian context, suggesting an urgent need for policy and regulatory reform to deliver these work-based solutions.

Lastly, it is clear that critical interdependencies require smoothing to support the efficacy of a connected tertiary system. For example, universal access to quality careers advising facilitates informed access to and participation in a harmonised system’s offerings. A national ‘Lifelong Learning Strategy’ would coalesce disparate initiatives and chart the course for change. A clear line of sight on maintaining industrial classification alignments is required. Systemic educational inequity, particularly in K-12, undermines efforts to close gaps in educational attainment for underserved groups and regions that struggle with labour market participation and social mobility. In a move in the right direction, the recent Australian Universities Accord review suggested in its Interim Report that, similar to the current UK government’s introduction of a lifelong loan entitlement from 2025, a ‘universal learning entitlement to high-quality tertiary education (higher education and VET) may be needed’ as the centrepiece of a new student-centred funding system, with initial priority given to access by equity-bearing students (Department of Education, 2023, p. 147). Ultimately, the Accord Panel’s Final Report did not embrace that approach, recommending instead a new and ‘better funding model’ to be planned and managed by a proposed Australian Tertiary Education Commission that would, inter alia, ‘effectively introduce “demand driven places for equity students”’ (Department of Education, 2024, p. 8). Meanwhile, the business case for a post-secondary ‘skills passport’ to enable learner-earners to upload and share their skills and qualifications is now also being explored.

Bean and Dawkins (2021, pp. 10–11), in a review of university-industry collaboration, identified three further ‘high level architectural actions’ required

• the development of a national skills taxonomy for a ‘common skills language’

• the implementation of AQF Review reforms for more responsive qualification design, closer education-industry collaboration and to enable alignment of micro-credentials to the AQF, and

• the delivery of a unified credentials platform for individuals to aggregate their lifelong learning history, and link to employment opportunities and future learning options.

This prologue will now consider the second of Bean and Dawkins’s architectural actions – AQF Review reform – by addressing first, the potential of well-functioning national qualification frameworks (NQFs), followed by an examination of the opportunity offered by the recent AQF Review.

The enabling role of national qualification frameworks

While a contemporary, fit-for-purpose NQF is not commonly identified as a critical enabler of a high-functioning, connected tertiary system, a recent review in Australia has offered an ‘imaginatively crafted modernisation’ of its AQF (Fowler, 2022, n.p.) that holds great promise for qualification reform and a harmonised system. Imaginative NQF reform is rare. In their review of NQFs for UNESCO, Keevy and Chakroun (2015) drew attention to the myriad of conceptual difficulties that have limited progress in qualification evolution internationally; particularly, the ad hockery and under-theorising of framework design and models, which has led to ‘regression towards pragmatism when facing conceptual difficulties’ (2015, p. 48).

In conceptual analysis undertaken for the 2019 AQF Review, Perkins et al. observed (2019, p. 33) that, while it might be desirable for NQFs to have an underpinning ‘learning outcomes matrix’ that is a ‘discrete, conceptual reference point for specification of qualification types’, most NQFs have simply developed existing qualifications into learning outcomes descriptors, which explains the their ‘idiosyncratic nature’. Keevy and Chakroun (2015, p. 55) note that the AQF is similarly flawed: ‘The early intent to promote parity between different qualification types, without referring to levels, did not gain traction. The retrospective introduction of levels was based on the existing qualifications’. The consequence of this ‘retro-fit’ approach – features of existing qualifications assigned to poorly differentiated levels – has been a difficulty in discerning any internal consistency within NQFs or in describing learning progression in any conceptually defensible way. Further, there is no logical basis on which to incorporate new qualification types, nor to adjust or adapt existing qualification types in response to changing education and training needs.

Based on their international comparisons, Keevy and Chakroun (2015, p. 91) observe that ‘all qualifications frameworks use level descriptors to peg qualifications on a hierarchical set of levels that number between 4 and 12, but mostly between 8 and 10’. A ‘locking to level’ approach has been adopted that assumes progression up the hierarchy occurs uniformly across each of the domains (of knowledge, skills, application and capabilities), all of which have the same number of levels.

In contrast to rigidity and a retro-fitted hierarchy, a well-designed and contemporary NQF should ‘establish a basis for improving the quality, accessibility, linkages and public or labour market recognition of qualifications within a country and internationally’ as a ‘bridge to lifelong learning’ (OECD, 2007, p. 22), especially as individuals increasingly access a mix of formal, non-formal and informal learning across the lifespan. In this framing, a NQF is a platform for cross-sectoral dialogue and a key national policy instrument to promote and actuate lifelong learning. Easy credit transfer and RPL/E are essential for a lifelong learning society, while UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) argues further that a lifelong learning culture is also ‘rooted in the labour market, which means reengineering and revitalizing workplace learning’ (UNESCO UIL, 2020, p. 39).

Many of these issues were addressed in the 2019 AQF Review, which will now be discussed.

Australian qualifications framework reform for a connected tertiary sector

Although Australia was an early global leader in NQF development in the 1990s and early 2000s, relative stasis in the AQF’s evolution since, despite several amendments including the addition of levels in 2011 (AQF Council, 2013), has meant this is no longer the case (Noonan et al., 2019). By comparison, other countries have modernised their NQFs in response to changing international and local contexts, moving beyond functional assurance of qualifications’ relativities, transparency and equivalence, to harness them rather as critical policy infrastructure that can facilitate workforce agility in response to rapid technological, industrial and social change. A particular imperative globally has been to enable flexible construction of multi-directional (rather than hierarchical) learning pathways that better suit lifelong learning and workforce requirements for rapid up- and re-skilling (Noonan et al., 2019).

As set out in the AQF Review Panel’s report (Noonan et al., 2019, p. 12), while the AQF continues to be widely used to assure the validity, reputation and value of formal qualifications, it requires substantial revision to

… more effectively fulfil its core role in defining qualification types, reflect emerging skills needs, facilitate credit recognition – including of shorter form credentials such as microcredentials – and support learner pathways within and between the education and training sectors.

The Panel concluded that the current AQF is deeply flawed, out-of-date and riddled with inconsistencies and gaps. For example, the current AQF, even as revised up to 2020, is silent on technological competence and digital literacy workforce requirements. Relevantly for present purposes, it entrenches the divide and parity of esteem issues between VET and HE, cements a hierarchical, laddered approach to learning with VET qualifications all at the lower end and, in common with its international counterparts, privileges the acquisition of knowledge over the acquisition of skills. The Review Panel heard of confusion and lack of clear delineation across the mid-range qualifications delivered by both VET and HE, and inconsistency and uncertainty for students around credit practices in HE in particular (Ithaca Group, 2018). Real questions arise as to the fitness-for-purpose of the AQF as a harmonising, cross-sectoral framework (Hodge & Knight, 2021).

In response, the AQF Review proposed a much more flexible and responsive instrument, linking the qualification system to lifelong learning for more explicit skills development, recognition and transferability (World Economic Forum, 2021). The reforms proposed for a revised AQF are for a system-wide, rather than a siloed, hierarchical sector-constrained, approach to qualification design for lifelong learning that

• values VET and HE equally

• emphasises Senior Secondary’s role in preparing students for post-secondary pathways

• rebalances the relationship between knowledge and skills by allowing for sophisticated skills attainment in its own right, no longer tied to a knowledge-complexity hierarchy, and

• promotes multi-directional learner pathways within and between sectors, with better credit, prior learning and experience recognition (including for micro-credentials) for lifelong learners.

The opportunity provided by a revised AQF for a connected tertiary system has been recently articulated and affirmed as follows (Department of Education, 2024, pp. 87–88)

AQF reform is essential if Australia is serious about transitioning to a new truly tertiary education system centred around lifelong learning and attainment of skills alongside knowledge for increasingly diverse learners …

The Noonan Review found that, while the AQF Is a valuable framework, it needs reform to meet the changing needs of learners, employers and the economy. The extensive body of work that underpinned this review mounted a compelling case for change and outlined a comprehensive set of reforms. The areas covered included supporting a more connected and aligned tertiary education system; increased visibility of skills across the entire AQF; greater parity of esteem between VET and higher education; support for recognition of prior learning; and recognition of microcredentials – all key concerns for this Review. The Noonan Review forms the foundation of this Review’s recommendations on AQF reform.

The AQF Review proposed a less complex AQF, with a primary focus on learners and qualification types (e.g. Bachelors, Masters, Diplomas), rather than on qualification levels, which hold little meaning for employers and learners-earners. A single, clearer taxonomy was recommended, presented with only one set of generic descriptors to replace the current and confusing two sets of purported learning outcomes. The shift to qualification types, that specify descriptors for qualification design, reflects advice the Review received that graduate learning outcomes are more appropriately reflected in individual qualification design (Perkins et al., 2019). The 10 current hierarchical and poorly differentiated ‘levels’ were recommended to be reduced to eight ‘bands’ of Knowledge and six ‘bands’ of Skills, all clearly and logically differentiated and more flexibly applied. The combined focus on qualification types and bands, rather than levels, highlights the role and value of individual qualifications, rather than their status in a levels-based hierarchy.

Contemporary definitions of the three domains – Knowledge, Skills and Application – were proposed, all defined in terms of action: the information to inform action (Knowledge); the capabilities to take action (Skills); and the context for action via learning and assessment conditions (Application). The ‘focus areas’ for each domain, which are missing in the current AQF, were made explicit. For example, the Skills focus areas are: learner self-management; problem solving and decision-making; communication; collaboration; and psychomotor skills. The proposed addition of psychomotor skills is another parity of esteem measure, providing (Noonan et al., 2019, p. 29)

… the opportunity to signal the value of a course that is fostering the development of sophisticated specialist skills involving the use of one’s own body and/or tools. These skills underpin many vocational qualifications, professional qualifications requiring high levels of dexterity and the creative and performing arts.

The three domains, together with updated ‘General Capabilities’ (language, literacy and numeracy skills; core skills for work; digital literacy; and ethical decision-making) can be flexibly interwoven in the tailored design of individual qualifications for the accurate articulation of specific learning outcomes for individual qualifications under a qualification type (e.g. for the individual qualification of ‘Bachelor of Business’, developed under the Bachelor Degree qualification type). These Capabilities are valued by employers, particularly for their transferability between roles, and are foundational for further learning and individual success. This revision compares favourably with the current AQF’s obscure treatment of ‘generic skills’, which are largely ignored in qualification design.

The transformational potential of ‘unlocking the levels’

The current AQF organises each of its three domains – Knowledge, Skills and their Application – in a rigid, lock-stepped progression across 10 forced levels dictated by the knowledge hierarchy. This means, for example, that when a new Diploma is designed there is no flexibility: a new Diploma must use all descriptors for each domain from the relevant level 5 specification, synthesised with the somewhat different descriptors for the Diploma qualification type. Regardless of the reality, a new Diploma must include all level 5 Knowledge, level 5 Skills and level 5 Application.

A key AQF reform is to enable greater accuracy in qualification design by ‘unlocking’ the levels/bands and not requiring they all progress in artificial sync. This reflects the reality that Knowledge, Skills and their Application do not all develop at the same time, and at the same rate, in lockstep with increasing Knowledge complexity. Unlocking Skills levels/bands is an international game changer in qualification design and allows for the accurate articulation of complex skill acquisition aligned to modern workforce demands. For example, rather than a new Diploma being inflexibly required to use all the level 5 specification and qualification type descriptors, the revised AQF provides flexibility for accurate design, with relevant Knowledge descriptors from one level/band, some relevant Skills features from a different band and other Skills features from another band again, as appropriate to the purpose of the specific qualification.

The additional unlocking of Application completely from both Knowledge and Skills (given Application is always specific to the context of an individual qualification) removes a further design flaw that has prevented lower lever qualifications from accurately representing the greater levels of autonomy and responsibility developed compared to qualifications at higher levels. For example, a level 5 Diploma of Aviation (Air Traffic Control) graduate exercises far greater immediate autonomy than a level 7–9 law graduate, who requires a further level 8 qualification and months of supervised practise. Unlocking Application allows individual qualifications to better represent to employers and learners the practical context within which learning and assessment occurs (e.g. by way of work integrated learning or other forms of practice- or employment-based learning and assessment, such as higher/degree apprenticeships or cadetships). General Capabilities are incorporated in an individual qualification as appropriate to, and complexity dependent on, the relevant field or discipline.

Using these various features, the revised AQF is a tool for modern qualification design that is sector-agnostic. Its allows generic descriptors for qualification types to be developed specifically into learning outcomes relevant and appropriate to individual qualifications.

Qualification confusion and overlap at sector boundaries

To alleviate current confusion in the AQF mid-range where there is overlap between the sectors, the Review proposed the extended use of Diploma qualification types for a clear sequence of mid-level, shorter formal credentials from Diploma to a (new) Higher Diploma (at the bachelor level) onto a Graduate Diploma, for up- and re-skilling in both HE and VET. The unfortunate addition of the Undergraduate Certificate in April 2020, which is only available in HE and was not recommended by the AQF Review, has served to further entrench disparity in status between HE and VET.

To signal differentiation where qualification types cluster at one level with different purposes, the Review recommended the inclusion of additional information (‘flags’) to help define qualification types (e.g. flags for Nationally Recognised Training, for apprenticeships and for research-oriented qualifications).

Enabling multi-directional pathways for lifelong learning

Finally, as individuals increasingly intersect with education and training (credentialled and non-credentialled) numerous times over their working lives, better guidance was recommended for credit recognition (including for AQF alignment of micro-credentials) to enable multi-directional pathways that smooth learners’ aggregation of formal, non-formal and informal learning. Many countries have enabled credit and RPL/E transparency by adopting national credit point systems. The AQF Review recommended that Australia should do likewise ‘to give students and providers a nationally consistent “currency” for negotiating credit transfer’ (Noonan et al., 2019, p. 14). In addition to improving student awareness of potential credit transfer, such an initiative should also encourage the take-up of pathways between HE and VET and facilitate easier international recognition. In a similar vein, a recommendation was made to modernise the volume of learning measure to be expressed in hours (not in years as is currently the case) for new learners.

Tertiary transformation through qualification design

There is furious policy agreement about the economic and social imperative to unlock a connected tertiary sector. This is a complex, multi-faceted policy space with countless moving parts and foci. However, central to broad ecosystemic reform is the imperative to attend to the structural dismantling of the VET-HE hierarchy, which is entrenched and reinforced in Australia in the current AQF.

The AQF Review acknowledged that a revised AQF alone cannot deliver a connected tertiary system nor assure parity of esteem between VET and HE. However, the revised AQF’s centrality to reform is clear in the various ways identified above: changes in language (from ‘levels’ to ‘bands’) and focus (from levels to qualification types); the inclusion of flags for Nationally Recognised Training and apprenticeships; the introduction of psychomotor skills; and, most particularly, unlocking levels to accord equal recognition to Knowledge and Skills accumulation, to accurately represent Application and to enable multi-directional pathways. The recommendations for assurance of better credit transfer and RPL/E arrangements fortify many of these enhancements.

As we seek to reconcile the dualities that entrench disconnection – between secondary and tertiary, between VET and HE, between knowledge and skills acquisition, between institutional and workplace learning, between the economy’s focus on skills and education’s on qualifications – there is much at stake. While an NQF/AQF focus might be perceived as pedantic and geeky, it is nevertheless a key piece of policy architecture for a connected education system; one that has learners and employers at its centre. This is a generational opportunity to enact significant ecosystemic step change – modern qualification design for modern (and future) world of work needs. We must have an education and training system designed for the future, not one that replicates the past. As Noonan and his colleagues observed in the Australian context (2019, p. 8)

… the relevance, effectiveness and utility of the AQF is arguably more important today than when it was first implemented as a loose, largely sector based framework in 1995. It provides the common language for the design and description of the types of Australian qualifications and the relationships between them, in a future where increasing levels and closing gaps in levels of educational attainment will remain a central economic and social policy goal for Australia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).