TAFE and the Invisible Graduates

So I was talking with a group of graduate recruiters the other day and they were commenting on how hard it is to find suitable IT grads. Another part of this discussion was around recruiting practices and the qualities required of graduates - 'cognitive competence' was high on the list, along with 'Leadership' and 'Emotional Intelligence' (usually referred to as EQ and EI).

Is it clear to anyone else that the number of people, especially those in their early 20s, with an IT bent, are probably not going to have a high level of social maturity? More importantly, does it matter?

When it comes to recruiting techos, I see many problems with the graduate recruitment practice, but i want to focus on two of these.

Problem 1: People who are technically brilliant may not be excellent in the areas of communication, emotional intelligence and leadership. The fact that recruiters are finding it so hard to find IT grads supports this. A selection process that bundles people from all disciplines together is fraught with difficulties. Most IT nerds don't crave leadership roles; climbing the ladder is anathema to them - what they need are new technical challenges and the freedom to work through these independently, or in small teams. Whether they are the back room boys who don't mind working amongst a trail of wires and electrical sockets, or the types who need to be left alone to sort through the complexity of data and programming symbols, they do not have much time for the corporate life - although they will reward employers with loyalty as long as they are valued. Of course there are exceptions - some will move on to management roles, but no employer wants or needs everyone to be a leader, even the graduates who they invest so much time and money in recruiting and developing.

When I raised this point with the graduate recruiters, a short discussion ensued and there was general agreement that what I had said held true.

Problem 2: This relates to sourcing. Having just been shown the statistics which indicated that there simply weren't enough IT grads to go around (which exacerbates the first problem), the next question I asked was 'Have you considered TAFE graduates?'. The responses I got, in order, from around the room were 'No, we don't do TAFE!', 'What is TAFE?', and 'No, we are high-end corporate so we only ever recruit (university) graduates'.

It became apparent at this point that our TAFE system is in serious difficulty and this goes way beyond the current fee cuts and competition from 'new' private players who have shown a a lack of integrity to the sector. It is not so much that it has a negative image, than no image at all. Although there was genuine interest among the group about TAFE and VET generally, I didn't leave with any sense that any of them would follow up to find out more information,

Going back 30-40 years, there were no university IT courses. People wanting to enter the industry were taught on the job or via a short course run by a vendor. Obviously, the industry has become a lot more complex since then and it is reasonable to expect that entry level personnel will have some training. The thing is, VET programs in schools equip students with up to Certificate III level, and many TAFE courses provide far more relevant training than universities. A young person of 18 or 20 straight from school or college may well be of greater use to an employer than a four or five-year degree holder, but employers will never know what they are missing out on.

One further question that I was asked during the break was, why would a young person even consider TAFE? Why don't they just go to university? Actually many do go on from TAFE to complete a degree course, but some don't - university is just not for everyone. TAFE generally provides more practical (and I would argue, more useful) training than universities. Young people often fail to achieve the best marks at school, not because they are not very smart, but because the business of growing up and becoming independent gets in the way. The other distinction is that, even today, TAFE courses aim to be vocational preparation courses, while university courses are more about learning for its own sake.

At various stages over my career, I have managed (with some difficulty) to persuade employers to consider TAFE students in their graduate and general recruitment programs, and can site various successful outcomes. I'm more than a little bit sick about the negativity around the TAFE sector. There is rarely any good news about it and the media should take responsibility for this. In any case, a general lack of awareness and interest in TAFE graduates means that employers are missing out on a large pool of potential employees, to their detriment. The TAFE sector needs to engage in robust marketing to and networking with larger employers, otherwise they are doing their students a great disservice. State and Federal governments also need to do what they can to ensure TAFE students have access to a wider range of employment opportunities.

The Could,Would and Should of University Education

For the last twenty-five years, give or  take, parents have been sold the idea that their children must attend university in order to guarantee their future employability,and, more importantly, income. Federal and State governments have reinforced the notion of the 'clever country', urging Australians to be better educated. This has been the dominant message, reinforced by Australian schools who stopped focusing on anything other  than which university course a young person should do; somewhere along the line careers advisors largely stopped talking about apprenticeships to students (not their fault entirely, as the apprenticeship system became much more complex and difficult to navigate), and since they have been able to offer more places and compete with each other, the universities have poured big money into attracting as many students as possible.

What we have in Australia right now is a tertiary system in chaos, which will increase exponentially if the current government's education policies are implemented (because what we heard on Tuesday night was less to do with budget and much more to do with ruling class snobbery).

Some good things have happened over the past twenty-five years. Some students who were previously shut out of universities have found a place; these include students from low socio-economic backgrounds, students with disabilities and refugees. We have seen a surge in 'first in family' students coming to uni. Perhaps this has worked too well, and underwrites the current Liberal government's reaction towards exclusiveness.

We have also seen the great grab for money in attracting overseas students to study in Australia. This was most effective over the 2000-2010 year period, after which this arrangement started to sour for the students and the families who paid the big bucks to send them here. Universities in China and India, for example, started improving the quality of their education, while ours remained stagnant. The promise of settling in Australia after graduation (which was part of the sell) became an idle hope for most; and after paying all that money for their kids education, parents found them back at home and unable to get a job.

Getting back to Australia, there are three glaring statistics related the Australian context. I am not going to put money on these figures being exact, but I am happy to stake my reputation on them being reasonably accurate. First - despite all the hype around university education, the percentage of Australians with degrees has not significantly altered in the last twenty-five years: still only around 25% of the population actually has a degree. Second, in around 80% of jobs that are advertised, a degree is not a mandatory requirement. And third, while raw statistics show that people with university degrees are less likely to be unemployed than those without degrees, many of these are not working in an area related to their degree, (or in any job that requires a degree) and are underemployed (working part-time or casually). Those from 'equity' groups including low socio-economic or indigenous backgrounds, people with disabilities, have much lower graduate employment outcomes than the traditional university graduates.

The statistics on employment outcomes for graduates are also influenced by the fact that many graduates, if they do not get a job, will go back to do further study - in many cases this actually lowers employability because of expectations of higher pay or better jobs on the part of the graduate, while employers may think they are overqualified but under-experienced.

As a career  practitioner, the message that I have the most difficulty in delivering is that employers want people who have already worked, that have an understanding of workplace expectations and the maturity to handle the rigours of holding down a job. So, in fact, employers want experience PLUS a degree, not a degree plus experience - but trying to get this across to the students and their families is almost impossible.

I digress a little. Back to the question of whether a degree is a could or should for young people and career changes. Obviously, for some jobs, a degree is essential - law, medicine, teaching, for example all require one that is specific to the field. For others, it can be an asset, such as accounting, public relations, and business. Sometimes, the things taught in an undergraduate course are less tangible, but important in careers that involve complex reasoning, research skills and the ability to look at problems or artefacts through different lenses, such those traditionally taught in the now much-maligned arts degree. The rush to university has also led to a multi-tiered system in which graduates are ranked by employers - some universities don't even rate in many cases, making the degree that is obtained relatively worthless. It has also led to a lowering of quality as the lower-tiered universities invite students to enrol, simply to fill seats, rather than assessing their ability to undertake the course.

For some job roles, a degree is unimportant or not required at all, but young people are still being told that this is the only post-secondary option they should be aspiring towards. This is one of the major contributing factors behind the lack of qualified tradespeople and the well-established pattern of students drifting from one university course to the next, trying to find one that suits, when the answer to their career dilemma lies elsewhere.

This does not mean that people who really want and need to go to uni should not be able to. What we need is for governments to stop their social engineering and trying to force us into particular kinds of education and return to the natural order of things. People undertake university courses for a range of reasons; this should be encouraged and those who have the ability and desire should have a much easier pathway, one based on equality and fairness.

I find it untenable that we are regressing to that place in time where university education was only for the elite. The right of all Australians to an education that befits their career aspirations, work interests and abilities should be unquestioned. We should all be working hard at young people into a range of work areas, especially those outside the standard professions, but if we are to remain a progressive society students  must not be the victims of their parents' economic status. Neither should any government, federal or state, allow education to become a pawn in their desire to 'balance the books' as this is a snake that will most definitely turn its head to poison the very society that created it.

What is fundamentally wrong with the direction the Abbott government is taking us is that it is preventing people from participating equally in society, reducing everything we do to an economic formula in which only the rich can win. Further to this, while Australia has always been known as the country of the 'fair go', this is becoming something our children will only read in history books (if they haven't banned them.).