Month: June 2021

The competitive education market for workers updating their skills

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In 2019 I wrote a series of posts on declining participation in formal education and training by people already in employment. Falling enrolments ran counter to claims that technology-driven disruptions to work would make further education more necessary than in the past.

The 2019 blog posts identified nine sources of survey and administrative data that should be trending up if the workforce disruption analysis was right. All seven data sources on individuals were instead trending down, while two employer surveys respectively showed a small increase in informal training and a larger increase in online training.

Informal training is not or is poorly measured in the individual person surveys. If it is increasing while structured learning is decreasing then this may signal a change in how people educate themselves after their initial formal education.

Prompted by this week’s release of new data on one of my trend indicators – ATO self-education expense claims – this post updates my 2019 analysis. Most indicators show signs of recovery but on the latest available data three are still trending down.

Postgraduate education

Postgraduate coursework education returned to growth in 2019. Commencing on-campus numbers continued to decline but were offset by online commencements. People moving straight from undergraduate to postgraduate study complicate my analysis, as they are trying to start rather than advance their careers. On the publicly available data I cannot distinguish the two groups.

Postgraduate numbers for 2019 remain below their earlier peak, but I expect 2020 and especially 2021 to be growth years. This is partly because I see postgraduate education as counter-cyclical, with COVID labour market disruptions in 2020 encouraging further study. If this hypothesis is right data noise complicates analysis of longer-term trends, but convenient online postgraduate options are attracting students.

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The ‘model code’ on academic freedom and freedom of speech and higher education law

Andrew Norton2 Comments

In his speech to the Universities Australia conference yesterday, Education Minister Alan Tudge expressed frustration that some universities had still not, after 26 months, complied with the model code on academic freedom and freedom of speech devised by Robert French. He told delegates that:

If it becomes apparent that universities remain unable or unwilling to adopt the Model Code, I will examine all options available to the Government to enforce it – which may include legislation.

This post updates an earlier one on the relevant law and legal options around academic freedom and freedom of speech. It argues that, at this point, the government cannot legally require full implementation of the model code. Additional legislation is therefore needed.

A policy on academic freedom and freedom of speech

The most important legal change since my summary last September is that the Higher Education Support Act 2003 has been amended to remove a requirement for universities to have a policy on the undefined concept of ‘free intellectual inquiry’ and instead have one on ‘academic freedom and freedom of speech’. The amended section reads:

19‑115  Provider to have policy upholding freedom of speech and academic freedom

 A higher education provider that is a *Table A provider or a *Table B provider must have a policy that upholds freedom of speech and academic freedom.

Table A means the public universities, Table B is the other universities. The amendment also includes a definition of academic freedom:

academic freedom means the following:

                     (a)  the freedom of academic staff to teach, discuss, and research and to disseminate and publish the results of their research;

                     (b)  the freedom of academic staff and students to engage in intellectual inquiry, to express their opinions and beliefs, and to contribute to public debate, in relation to their subjects of study and research;

                     (c)  the freedom of academic staff and students to express their opinions in relation to the higher education provider in which they work or are enrolled;

                     (d)  the freedom of academic staff to participate in professional or representative academic bodies;

                     (e)  the freedom of students to participate in student societies and associations;

                      (f)  the autonomy of the higher education provider in relation to the choice of academic courses and offerings, the ways in which they are taught and the choices of research activities and the ways in which they are conducted.

This is a revised version of the definition of academic freedom that appears in the French review. It does not, however, include all the issues covered in the model code.

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