New campus, new CEO. CIT is positioned for a new golden age of vocational education. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
The word is finally out. University is not for everyone, and getting a trade is not a dead end.
It has taken a long time, but the yawning skills gap that has opened up, combined with the sheer volume of work in Australia’s infrastructure pipeline and the number of homes needed to provide a roof over people’s heads, has brought much neglected vocational education to the fore.
Anybody who has tried to get a tradie out, and what you might have to pay, will know that there just aren’t enough of them, and a good one is worth their weight in gold.
For years, kids were told a university degree is the ticket to good jobs and high incomes.
That may be the case for some, but not for all degrees and not from all universities. The bar has also been raised in some instances to not just having a degree, but a Master’s degree, to get an interview.
For many young people who would have been better suited to developing a different skill set, it can be a bitter experience.
Some, no doubt, have put the degree in the drawer and opted for a career reset if they can. Hence, the mature-age apprentice.
The beauty of trade skills is that they are transferable and can be applied in a range of settings.
Governments, recognising the skilled labour shortage they are confronting, are splashing out on incentives such as fee-free courses, the Commonwealth’s $10,000 lure for people to enter the housing industry and financial support for employers of apprentices.
The mistake of hollowing out the TAFE system through privatisation and providing a pot of money that attracted dubious operators appears to have been rectified with a strengthening of the public system and better regulation.
School career guidance, following much lobbying from industry groups, is again promoting apprenticeships and career pathways in the building and construction industry.
But targeted skills migration will also have to be part of the solution.
CIT CEO Dr Margot McNeill at CIT Woden. She sees university and vocational education as part of a full offering.
For the ACT’s vocational educator CIT, emerging from years of turmoil and moving to a spanking new campus in Woden under a new CEO, the timing is opportune.
CIT Woden is a significant investment from the government, but ultimately, it is just a building, and of course, it is just one campus. Without students and the staff to teach them, it will be a white elephant.
It won’t come to that, but CIT is in deficit, and if the government is serious about it being the ACT’s skills engine, funding will have to match that ambition.
ACT Treasurer Chris Steel, when asked about this, says the coming budget will have more to say on skills investment.
New CIT CEO Dr Margot McNeill is strongly focused on innovation and broadening students’ skills, and doesn’t take an antagonistic view of education, dividing the university and vocational streams.
She prefers a more holistic and flexible system, in which students can dip in and out, and go back and forth, to gather the skills they need throughout their lives.
Such an approach doesn’t segment education, devaluing some parts over others.
The hostility towards universities from some quarters is unwarranted, just as the disdain for a trade was short-sighted.
Some individuals have augmented their degree with a trade, while others have pursued a trade and added a degree to help them navigate the increasingly complex business landscape.
In short, it needn’t be either/or.
Education at all levels is an investment in the future. To penny-pinch is to shortchange our young and not-so-young people, depriving them of the opportunities that ultimately benefit us all.
