What bright ideas will help TAFE staff develop new capabilities, asks John Mitchell. With mounting pressure on TAFEs to increase their ability to make money, in the future many more TAFE staff may be rated by their potential to generate ...

Any new measure of SES needs to have the confidence of the sector and is fit for purpose, writes Trevor Gale. DEEWR is on the verge of releasing its discussion paper on how to measure socioeconomic status (SES) for higher ...

Next year, higher education reform will move more squarely into the implementation stage. There will adjustments to be made, says Peter Coaldrake. After two years we have a clear picture of the nature and intent of the Rudd government’s education ...

The 10 commandments of higher education? Heck no, it’s the ongoing imperatives in relation to the institutional research agenda going forward, writes Gavin Moodie. St Julia of Lalor wandered in the western suburban wilderness for 11 long years when she ...

Are providers really moving towards market-based approaches, asks John Mitchell. There is a view circulating around the VET sector that many providers are becoming less dependent on government funding and more aligned with the fluctuations of the market. But in ...

VET graduate employment falls in 2009 The economic slump has seen the number of VET graduates employed after training decrease. According to the NCVER’s 2009 ‘Student outcomes survey’, 77.8 per cent of graduates were employed after training, compared to 80.7 ...

Not having a problem is a problem in the new, lean organisation, writes Ray Griffiths. There is little doubt that in a world of market contestability, user choice and uncapped funding for places, the efficiency and effectiveness of our internal ...

Last-minute bailouts have saved two ATCs, but a third hasn’t been so lucky. Uncertainty has hung over the Australian technical colleges (ATCs) until the very end, with the future of one of the colleges still unclear even though its founding ...

Two of the ambitious VET targets the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) has set may be much closer to fulfilment than they realise. It all comes down to what is and isn’t counted. COAG has called for a halving of ...

Meeting recently in Canberra, state and territory training ministers showed they’re right behind Canberra – six months behind, in some cases. John Ross reports. When Commonwealth, state and territory education and training ministers got together in Melbourne in April, it ...