by CLAIRE FIELD

more learning may not be enough

In the context of last week’s Universities Australia conference, it was pleasing to see there will be an explicit emphasis on improving productivity at the upcoming Jobs and Skills Summit.

In his UA conference address, the Chair of the Productivity Commission, Michael Brennan asked why productivity is at a 50 year low despite Australia never having had a more highly educated population nor more people employed in research?

While the Summit will have a strong focus on immediate actions the government can take – and Skills Minister Brendan O’Connor leading the work on education and skills suggests the VET sector is a keen area of interest – the subsequent Treasury white paper process should allow the higher education sector the time it needs to respond to Brennan’s question.

Brennan suggested one of the possible reasons for this productivity dilemma is that higher education is increasingly focussed on conformity and not on innovation/creativity. Therefore when graduates enter the workplace they are less able to think differently about problems and less able to suggest new ideas.

It is a provocative suggestion (and was not the only hypothesis Brennan offered) – especially in the context of comments to the conference by Coursera co-founder, Daphne Koller.

With over 100 million learners having used Coursera and more than 4 000 universities subscribed to “Coursera for Campus” to gain access to courses developed by other universities, Koller posited that the future of education needs to involve content which is broad enough to be scalable combined with content which is customised to add a local dimension. She defined this as another form of hybrid learning and went on to make the point that this is not just where higher education is heading but where it “needs” to head: i.e. offering students both a generalised and a personalised learning experience.

While personalised learning offered by the best EdTech companies can improve learning (with students learning more and retaining knowledge for longer when compared with traditional face-to-face instruction) – Brennan’s challenge suggests learning more may not be enough.

As the Fair Work Ombudsman makes the university sector a strategic priority to address chronic levels of underpayment – Brennan’s challenge and the new government’s focus on productivity suggest it is time for a renewed emphasis on university teaching which involves a rethink on how teachers are engaged and remunerated and crucially on what they teach.

 Claire Field spoke with Shirley Alexander, one of the sector’s innovators, on her retirement from UTS. Shirley shared her views on the future of the sector and recent innovations UTS is pursuing. Listen ONLINE or search for ‘What now? What next?’ in your podcast feed