Opinions

One could argue that higher education has gone from being a rite of passage for the privileged few, to now being more directly connected to the need to close skills gaps. The over-riding sense is that education increasingly needs to meet people, both learners and employers, where they are at. This means both in the multiple and continuous life stages of their turning to learning, and the skills they need for its primary purpose for them of being productive in a changing world of work. Meeting learners where they are at increasingly means through technology and at work and at times that suit them and through the facilitation of others. It has long left being an absolute requirement for it to be on campus, face to face only, and at times that suit us and our systems.

We must monitor outcomes in seeking to grow our crop of numbers of equity graduates, and them providing the skills we need for future work. That needs us to see them in the first place and recognise their lived experiences and show them that they matter. We need to care about them more than we care about ourselves and our places in rankings. And this needs significant shifts in our culture, governanceand leadership.

An alternative vision of future education is as technology enabled services, focused on lifelong learning, targeting learners predominantly global and online. This vision presents challenges to those operating with infrastructure, processes and staff and leadership profiles, and offering learning products, meant for the old model of higher education. It presents opportunities for those with changed mindsets to be bold and innovative.

The Accord presents an exciting, energising and unique opportunity for equity and inclusion to be on the front page and in the lead position in change in our sector. It is unleashing long awaited energy and enthusiasm from those that have shown dedication to its cause and case for lifetimes, most fully by those with lived experiences.

It is easy to think we are alone in going through a once in a generation review of higher education and that all the answers we need should come from within. Before jumping to that conclusion, one of several reality and sense checks can come from contrasting our experience and thoughts towards solutions, with lessons others learned trying the same.

We might all need to accept a different funding and regulatory environment in the future. We might all need to accept that more than there being winners or losers as our system evolves to meet the needs of our learners and cities, that there is strength in collectively supporting diversity of providers with differences in mission.

Given the links between technology use and equitable engagement, technology should have a central role in lifting equity in higher education. Technology should also play a more central role in the Universities Accord process and what it leads to, potentially in conjunction with the Australian and global EdTech sector and industry. A fuller embracing of technology in teaching and learning will improve both quality and equity of the university system. At a time when we’re looking to increase student numbers and include more diverse Australians in university than ever before, the power of technology to achieve policy aims can’t be overlooked.

We might have to make technology enabled employment a venue for future oriented, relevant lifelong learning facilities by smart learning facilitators from a new model of higher education. This needs embodied mind sets in higher education leaders and from leaders of the accord. We might need to get out of our higher education bubble and create a psychological safe innovation environment that separates performance and learning zones and rewards them differently and separately. The Tertiary Education Commission on its own may not be the answer to that. A learning capability for the sector that gives space to think and debate and create the future might be the piece that is missing at present.

At a time when the Australian Universities Accord is looking to reposition the sector and its institutions for a doubling of student completions by 2050, primarily from under-represented equity groups, ignoring the full potential contribution of AI to achieving that end, is an oversight. The most significant recent breakthrough productivity technology needs a bigger place in our plans than that. Given limitations of funding and the issues with student pipelines from our school system, this might be the only means of realising the vision.

A great trigger to many successful businesses and start-ups, including in the technology and education fields, arises from founders and innovators with a strong personal passion driven by their formative experiences. Such a foundation for entrepreneurship is often complemented by how these experiences shape approaches to leadership.