TAFE < Uni? On snobs, schools and skills

It annoys me the most is the fact that university always considered to be more than TAFE. But different is not better. VET has a different knowledge set, different pedagogy, and indeed much of it is more powerful (useful) than university study.


I now teach accounting in a TAFE, at the degree level. There is a LOT of similarity between the Diploma of Accounting and the Bachelor of Accounting. Similar body of knowledge, and (perhaps unfortunately) the style of teaching is delivered rather similar also. But they are in no ways substitutable. 

I graduated from a Masters of Professional Accounting, got the workforce, and I found myself frustratingly useless.  I had paid close to $50,000, gained a large number of “critical thinking” skills and essentially none of it was useful for taxation practice.  All the know-how was missing, but I had plenty of analyse-why.  For my $60’000 and 6 odd years of my life, there shouldn’t have been ANYTHING missing.

I found the real-world-workforce very difficult as I simply had to learn the craft of bookkeeping - from scratch - on the job. This slowness cost my employer money, and he let me know about it. It damaged my confidence, disappointed my employer and crushed any hope of promotion in that firm.  


Good accountants need good bookkeeping skills; likewise doctors SHOULD have good nursing skills.  This is almost never the case, and perhaps this is the root of the problem.  

Many believe that if one can do high order statistics and vast amounts of metric algebra, you should also be able to do the “basic” mental arithmetic. The truth is  these are completely divorced skill sets.  I openly and honestly admit that my primary school was completely lacking.  During the 1980s Steiner Schools was all the rage.  Basic numeracy and spelling was irrelevant, but the child’s creativity was sacrosanct.  Now we have an adult generation tht sp33l lik dis, u no wat i mean? Steiner was extremely damaging to an entire generation of workers.  Thanks hippies.   

Aside: I am in the strange position where I cannot do something that my parents, and children seem to do very naturally - add, subtract, multiply and divide my head.  (Oddly enough, I can also actually do something that neither my parents, children can do: and that is program a VCR.)

Employer groups agree: the current model is in desperate need of change.  They aren’t getting what they expect from the kids.  The “kids” come out of higher and higher levels of school and they are still terrible when they hit the ground.  I met a senior person from the Swinburne TAFE Curriculum Development Unit who described their industry discussions.  Here is a liberal paraphrasing:

Swinburne asked “What do you want as employers?”

Industry: “We want graduates who are equipped with both the foresight (analysis) enough know-how (skills) to put it into practice.

Swinburne: “YES! We’ve got this great program where kids go from TAFE to Uni, which means…”

Industry: “No no NO!  You have got it backwards. They should go to uni FIRST so they know why they are there, and THEN to TAFE to learn how to put it into practice.  This way they learn practical skill more efficiently since they are not blindly following orders”.

So TAFE should follow uni?  Now there’s a real education revolution.

You mean "hire" education right?
So what is it about higher education that is "higher"?  If there is so much more nitty-gritty stuff at the TAFE level, then why is it seemed to be “less than” university?  In the egalitarian society that Australia is, it is extremely common to see the bookkeeper earned $70-$80,000 per annum. At the same time a graduate accountant will earn a meagre $35,000.  While one can always argue that professional accounting has an essentially endless upper ceiling, if you found the expected wage adjusted for attrition, including those graduates who just simply “didn’t ever make it into the industry”, you would find that the expected wage for accountants is far less than those of their “brainless” bookkeeping counterparts.

Somehow the mechanic in this country seems to earn more than the engineer. 

Ultimately it all boils down to supply and demand.  The professions are in constant flush supply of eager young graduates.  Employers are spoilt for choice, and consistently demand that all the training be done at school, and never on their own expense.  Compare this to industry skills, where employers are constantly falling over themselves to update the staff skills of technicians, and the savvy technician can easily outstrip the wages of the professional.  Anyone who has worked in mine can attest to this.

Compare my brother and myself.  My brother (the tradesman) complained to me about the pathetic wages he received as an apprentice during his trade school years.  He told me of how the unions were out there to protect him from the evil capitalists.  In my case I went to undergraduate, and then postgraduate studies, both at Go8 universities. I was never paid to study, rather, I racked up an obscene amount on the HECS bill.  At least six full-time years of my life have been poured into higher education. Only now is paying off.  Not a great ROI in any financial analysis. 

On the other hand, my brother was paid the entire time throughout his training, and being a VET level course he was essentially subsidised by the government such that it cost him less than $100 a semester to go to school.  On the other hand my textbooks were frequently $150 each.


Social expectations
So what is "quality" or "better" anyway?  Students mistake a higher price tag for higher quality (since it's all about exclusivity).  Employers mistake "higher qualifications" for "better" qualifications.  Students love elitism, but hate hard tests and failing.  So they just BUY elitism if they can afford it.  But when they graduate, they quickly become are one of the many; as important as a full stop in the National Library. 


The problem is both snobbery and simultaneously the lack of it. If we weren't snobs we'd look to the VET sector to provide skills that we need.  Or if we were absolutely snobby to the point of a caste system, then we wouldn't care less about skills, since caste is about who you are and not what you know or can/can't do.  


Both purgatory and no man's land are likewise unhappy medium places.   

In a stratified society, such as those in Asia, or indeed the United Kingdom, this snobbery could be justified.  Australians, with their so-called “fair go” ways, have an inherent distrust for anybody who believes in this snobbery.  Essentially the financial rewards simply aren't there, and nor are the social aspects either. 

There are opportunities for the open minded

There is a very large number of young and able students, who see the VET articulation path as a price driven opportunity.  Doing a VET diploma for one year and then articulating into another two years of higher education, essentially means that you are receiving a one third discount on your entire degree. 33% Cheaper you say? Forget about upfront HECS payments, this is the way to go.

Essentially the solution should include 1 of 2 things: ONE, either we restore they returns to higher education and really do make it “higher” where it simply is failing students currently, or TWO we should drop the backwards notion that TAFE is less than university at all. Going from Uni to TAFE isn't a downgrade - it's sharpening the knife you just forged. 

TAFE is different, it is not less than higher education.  


-Tetracarbon out

Textbooks should be included in tuition fees

What to do about students who refuse to buy their assigned text books?

There are a large number of students that photocopy text books wholesale. Is this any better/worse then downloading a DVD? Probably not. I am writing a text book of my own now, so I my position may might be biased. 

Yet I find the position somewhat conflicted.  While for many years I have been a fan of the GNU GPL (freesoftware) movement, and copyleft ideals. I have written about the creative commons before also. 

I am a big supporter of applying as much of these ideas to education.  Wikipedia is of course the biggest example of open sourced knowable. MIT open courseware is another great example. The University of Michigan has yet another like portal of their own. Closer to home, USQ is also jumping on the bandwagon . Maybe legally free is the way to go. 

Sometimes, you have to find away around the attitude
rather than try to fight it head on.

Even still, I don't feel so good when I see students with 500 pages of photocopied text book in class.  But then at the same time I think "at least they turned up and at least they've got something in their fingers."  Most students are too lazy to even turn up to class. 

Moreover, I am sick of trying to  teach students without text books. They damage their own learning, and failing them is not sufficient incentive to change behavior. As it is, we (educators) are pressured not to fail too many. So even if the entire bell cure is poor, that does not mean we can afford to fail everyone that is "not yet competent". Only the most poor portion will fail. It is quite common to see educators try to jocky everyone else across that magical pass line. 
So I propose this, FORCE new text books on everyone and include it in the cost of tuition. To make it more appealing, we should ensure that as this is a mandatory requirement it is likewise included in your HELP loan, meaning that your education isn't draining up front to those that can not afford it. Indeed, this is more inline with the spirit of the HECS system anyway. 

Potential problems:
* This may/will create an oversupply of used text books. An immediate counter argument is that students really ought to be keeping a professional library if they are serious about their education and their profession anyway. 

* What if a student fails and must repeat? - Then you ought not have to repurchase, this can be found from internal records however. 

* Other pros/cons listed below by your comments. Email me at phillipjustinwong@gmail.com

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It helps when daddy's a tax lawyer

There's this nice feel good story on the front page of the Australian today.  It  reports about a young lass who managed to take on the evil tax man and win at the high court.  She is now able to claim deductions for all of her study because the social security payment she received was linked to her going to school. 


This is sounds like a good outcome for students, but is inequitable as it does not apply across all students. We actually need to allow ALL students (including our internationals) to capitalise and then "depreciate" their education over their working lives - I proposed a 5 year write off period.


Basically you need to show that there is a "nexus" or a sufficient connection between money in and money out.  So if you need to spend money to make money, you get the deduction for the money out.  This means that since our friendly young student teacher was getting Youth Allowance (a means tested Australian Government social security payment to students who are citizens), she HAD to go to school to get it, and therefore HAD to buy book, bus tickets etc...  This is 

you need to show that there is a "nexus" or a sufficient connection between money in and money out.

This is where the law falls down.  I am 100% behind the High Court's decision, but I fear that it's a correct legal outcome but not the equitable outcome.  The student that does not receive youth allowance gets nothing.  Likewise the international student (who makes up our second biggest export) gets not a damn thing.  How is this fair? Actually, I believe that this ruling means that she should have been able to claim her HECS (tuition) fees also.  


Something has to change  
That something is likely to be the parliament.  For sure The Australian Government will use their legislative right just to cover over the hole in the same way they did in the La Rosa case.  [ for the legal nerds, that would be FC of T v LA ROSA 2003 ATC 4510]  La Rosa was a drug dealer who, like Al Capone was done by the tax office. (I realize it was the IRS rather than the ATO, but let's move on).  The Commissioner of Taxation La Rosa alleged that La Rosa had not filed a tax return or reported his income from his business operations -  you know the sort of business where you push drugs.  But La Rosa claimed he was robbed of all of his profits and therefore claimed a deduction for the theft.  


Of course, the government wasn't about to give the bad guys a head start in tax, so the wrote  s26-54 ITAA97 to prevent and deduction or CGT cost base to the extent that they relate to illegal activities.  So all of the income is assessable, but none of the expenses would be allowed as deductions.  Harsh, but kind of fair.  


The point is that the Gillard government would be quick to cover up this new "loophole" and just write a specific denial for ALL education expenses at universities.  Problem is, that we should be creating tax incentives to go to school. 


Make it fair and give it to everyone
Supposed I am a tradesmen and I sink $50'000 into a van for my business, I get a a deduction on the van by way of depreciation.  But if I drop the same $50'000 and 3 years of my life into an accounting degree (and work crappy hospitality jobs to pay the way) then I get not a damn thing because there is no current nexus between my crappy hospitality income and the accounting degree.  So the tradesmen has a direct incentive to invest in physical capital, but human capital 


Now I teach accounting at the university level, and I dare anyone to study accounting for "private use, enjoyment and fun".  The ONLY reason you study accounting is to get a job and make money.  There should be no difference between a dollar invested in tangible capital, and a dollar spent on human capital.  Why do we slog the workers so hare and give business (the owners of capital) all the tax breaks?  Indeed there is a wealth of research to suggest that investment in education yields some of the highest returns.  


Rather then focusing on the raw surpluses as the only measure of the government's economic success, Shouldn't we attempt to make the tax system fairer and increase it's efficiency?  BP recently turned around a profit (as it sold off assets to pay out pending damagers) but it also trashed the gulf of Mexico.  If we just look at this quarter's "bottom line" we could deem BP's oil spill a great success as we realized profits. But that's insane.  


Likewise, a system that penalizes the MOST productive workers but grants businesses deductions is also insane.  


So how about I claim some depreciation on HECS bill Ms Gillard? 


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