Vocational education and training (VET), the perennial bridesmaid of Australian tertiary education, is stealing a march over a university sector that has long held most of the cards.

Funding arrangements Down Under routinely favour universities, which ¨C unlike most VET programmes ¨C have access to federal teaching subsidies and income-contingent loans to cover tuition fees.

Policy developments such as the discounted online certificate courses offered during the coronavirus pandemic, and the free enabling courses recommended by the Universities Accord, have bankrolled university incursions into traditional VET areas of delivery.

But there are signs that public vocational colleges are gaining political ascendency over a university sector seen as poorly governed and ill suited to labour force realities.

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Training minister Andrew Giles said the government¡¯s promise to fund free technical and further education (TAFE) places had been a ¡°key dividing line¡± between his Labor Party and the opposition in the lead-up to the May election. ?

He said Labor had made free TAFE a ¡°permanent feature¡± of the national VET system ¨C ¡°in fact, we locked it into law¡± ¨C through the , which earmarks funding for 100,000 tuition-free training places a year.

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¡°The jobs we need to fill are primarily those supported by vocational education and training pathways,¡± Giles told an on 12 June. ¡°Skills are at the core of every workforce challenge we face.

¡°In New South Wales, for example, more than 90 per cent of the 400 occupations on the critical skills shortage list require only vocational qualifications. As someone who holds a law degree and a BA I can say this: how many lawyers or history majors does it take to build a house?¡±

He said universities currently absorbed about 50 students for every 30 who enrolled in vocational colleges. ¡°I want to see more people going into VET.¡±

Giles told the that he favoured a ¡°50-50 split¡± between higher and vocational education. His office told Times Higher Education that this was the ¡°dream scenario¡±, although the government had not set a ¡°rigid¡± target.

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The Universities Accord recommended two attainment targets for achievement by 2050: for 55 per cent of 25- to 34-year-olds to have higher education degrees, and for 80 per cent of working age people to have tertiary qualifications at apprenticeship level or above. But the government has only adopted the broader tertiary target.

The 55 per cent target was not mentioned in Labor¡¯s budget response to the accord and is rarely if ever cited by politicians, fuelling perceptions that the government has decided to prioritise VET over higher education.

Analysts are dubious that the 55 per cent target is achievable by 2050, in any case. Efforts to equalise admissions between higher education and VET would add to the scepticism.

In its December , advisory body Jobs and Skills Australia reported that almost two-thirds of employment growth in 2024 had come from occupations with VET ¡°pathways¡±. Its commissioner, accord panellist and former Western Sydney 51¹ú²úÊÓƵ vice-chancellor Barney Glover, said longstanding pro-university policies on both sides of politics had injected ¡°an imbalance into the post-secondary profile¡±.

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Glover told the that higher education qualifications had grown by 67 per cent during the decade to 2021, while vocational qualifications had increased by just 25 per cent. ¡°We need to rebalance that to meet the jobs of the future.¡±

Glover¡¯s stance was bemoaned by Universities Australia during its conference in February. ¡°I look forward to Barney Glover¡¯s next speech¡­where he advocates equally for university as he does for VET and TAFE,¡± CEO Luke Sheehy told the National Press Club.

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com