TAFE - imperative to Australian education and infrastructure

Interviewed for the New Left Project, political philosopher Noam Chomsky identifies what ought to be universally known and acknowledged: namely, that university fees are central to sustaining the class system. This occurs not only through privileging those whose parents are able to pay 'upfront' fees or contribute to them, or support their offspring whilst studying, but by directing students into the most lucrative professions or sectors:

'Take something as simple as raising tuition fees – it's much more true in the US than elsewhere, but in the US tuition is now sky high – in part it selects things on a class basis but more than that, it imposes a debt burden. So if you come out of college with a big debt you're not going to be free to do what you want to do. You may have wanted to be a public interest lawyer but you're going to have to go to a corporate law firm …'

This limitation of flexibility, lack of scope to decide and be able to do what one might be best disposed to, is about freedom and its denial. As Chomsky observes, those in power do not approve of those without it having the ability or scope to upset the status quo: the idea of freedom 'is very frightening for those who have some degree of privilege and power and … that shows up in the education system too'.

Although primarily directed to his own country, as Chomsky recognises and remarks, the problem goes way beyond the US. Australia is well implicated.

For Australia, this follows first through re-imposition of university fees in the 1980s, denying or making immeasurably difficult access to higher education for those without resources to pay upfront fees or lacking family backing that reduces the impact of fees and provides support for living expenses. University fees shut out working-class youth and potential mature age students or has them graduating with a high debt-burden. In turn, the policy results in an emphasis upon degrees in fields that most readily accommodate repayment of the debt. Fees become a dictator not only of who can attend university, but of what those who do make it should do with their education and the learning opportunities university should provide them.

Now, the problem is not isolated to universities. It has spread through the entire tertiary sector and into vocational and educational training (VET), with an emphasis on fees and a push toward providing courses the sole object of which is money-making employment. Worse, the trend is toward a private sector take-over of TAFE or, at minimum, TAFE being downgraded so that it is simply a competitor in the educational field, with private sector 'educators' being given carte blanch. Now, money-making is not only the aim of educational provision in terms of the outcomes for students, it is to be the sole aim of all VET providers.

Unlike universities (federally funded), the major funding for TAFE has come from state government budgets. In 2012, however, federal and state governments reached an agreement whereby millions of federal dollars would go to the VET sector, on the basis of increased student numbers and improved vocational training. Despite this agreement, however, Victoria cut $300 million from TAFE, followed by similar or proposed cuts in Western Australia and other states. This attack on TAFE has come in the face of its significant role and contribution to education and training. Funds taken from TAFE are going to private providers, despite private providers' poor track record in supplying solid courses, high-level skills training (or any training), positive educational outcomes or any education outcomes at all.

In Victoria, the changes have led to huge rises in student fees, with courses cut and institutions closed or at risk. Consequently, New South Wales says its programme is designed differently, with loans to be available for students who take government subsidised diploma courses. So TAFE students will face the debt-burden confronting university students, with the NSW emphasis correspondingly to be on courses approved by government, this in turn to be determined in consultation with industry and 'labour market research'. This means that courses in arts and humanities will be eliminated or able to continue only with increased fees – fees to be paid upfront without subsidy or support through loans or other financial underpinning. Arts and humanities students will therefore face no government debt-burden, but may find no courses available to them, whether because the courses no longer exist or they do not have the financial means pay or to survive whilst studying.

The emphasis is wholly upon education and training for jobs. The notion that education and training has a broader purpose has no place in this approach. For TAFE and other providers, the NSW government calls this 'lifting their game'.

Yet research shows that TAFE has traditionally played a disproportionate role in VET and the benefits it provides to Australian infrastructure as a whole, when 'infrastructure' is defined and recognised not only as roads, bridges and buildings, but as including intellectual development and the accumulation of skills.

Christopher Stone of the Centre for Policy Development points out that amongst other positive contributions, TAFE caters to disproportionately high numbers of students living in rural and remote areas, students with a disability or 'long-term condition', and students from working-class and disadvantaged backgrounds, particularly those experiencing socio-economic disadvantage. Economic and social benefits accrue ultimately to Australia as a whole, for his research:

'… shows the role VET plays in both addressing disadvantage as well as the substantial government return on its investment. Returns on investment have been estimated as more than six to one for NSW TAFEs. And a potential two to one return on investments in the VET sector nationally. Beyond the purely economic arguments, there is an even stronger case that it provides substantial social benefits by giving a forum for those from disadvantaged backgrounds to improve their options.'

In addition to its basic function of providing vocational training, TAFE plays an important role in ensuring that those who do not see themselves as 'university-capable' come to appreciate their own abilities and capacity for study and higher learning. In the US, studies show that students from disadvantaged backgrounds run the risk of 'dropping out' from higher education (college and university), because they face obstacles not confronted by their more advantaged fellows. Education is, say these findings, playing a 'growing role … in preserving class divisions' with 'the gaps … growing'. This directly relates back to the emphasis upon education and training being intertwined with earning prospects. In the US, 'thirty years ago, there was a 31 percentage point difference between the share of prosperous and poor Americans who earned bachelor's degrees … Now the gap is 45 points'.

That outcome is a consequence of there being no foundation for higher learning provided by the education sector in the US, with students who achieve in secondary education lacking supports enabling them to succeed at university. The result is a high-level sense of failure – a loss of self-esteem, a crisis of self-belief, and a destruction of the hopes for the high-level achievement to which their secondary school results led them to aspire. In Australia, TAFE plays a role that can counter the poverty of support existing in the US – a role that must be maintained and, indeed, increased, if those ordinarily cut out of higher education are to be able to succeed, and the class hierarchy of education and society be countered.

The notion that TAFE should limit itself to vocational education and training leading solely to paid employment is firmly fixed in the philosophy that the status quo should be preserved. Yet to date, TAFE has succeeded in playing a tripartite role in the education and training sector. It has done this by, first, ensuring that its focus on vocational outcomes matches industrial gaps: TAFE far better than private providers has been attuned to industry needs and the changing face of employment. Secondly, TAFE has provided education and training for those who are transitioning from one field of employment to another: essential in a world where 'downsizing' and redundancies have become a standard in so many areas of paidwork. Thirdly, TAFE has played a crucial role in building capability-recognition in those who ordinarily would not believe themselves to be tertiary sector and particularly 'university material'. Beyond all this, TAFE provides creative learning for students from and of all backgrounds, seeking to learn for learning's sake, desiring expansion of their brains for the purpose of stimulating thought, and in pursuit of intellectual endeavour because it is inspiring, expanding of the mind, and adds to their capacity to contribute in and to the world.

The Howard government's disproportionate funding to private schools was a measure designed to maintain the class system through denying the government school sector funds it desperately required. In 1996, 'for every $1.00 spent on a student in a public school, the federal government spent £4.40 (recurrent) on each private school student'. This meant that by 2005, 'for every $1.00 spent on a child in a public school, 'the government' spent $5.63 on every private school student'.

The current attack on TAFE heralds a continuation of this policy.

As Christopher Stone concludes, TAFE has the 'ability to work for everyone' and does so. Echoing Chomsky, he observes that the role played by TAFE for disadvantaged groups 'is a challenge to … state governments that are implementing or considering large cuts to TAFE funding …' Why, he says, are cuts 'being made to education providers that are clearly using these public funds to provide opportunities to all'? Why are governments 'choosing not to make this investment when everyone wins?'

Preventing TAFE from continuing as premier VET provider, down-grading it and its achievements and, along with this, those of its teachers, trainers and students, is destructive of not only of the institution in itself, but of a key part of and contributor to Australian infrastructure. Yet perhaps the answer is that 'everyone winning' is not the aim of governments intent on undoing TAFE, its standing and its role.

To paraphrase Chomsky, it is 'very frightening for those who have some degree of privilege and power' to accept, much less support, the freedom that comes through education, particularly for those who have traditionally been denied such freedom.