Document: BateMoodie1.doc Author: Gavin Moodie Save Date: 22/11/2010 Page 1 of 4 Types of tertiary education institutions: description or prescription? Paper presented to the L H Martin Institute conference 11 November 2010, Melbourne. Gavin Moodie, RMIT I have been asked to set the scene for the panel discussion after morning tea on what is the tertiary education sector, what should it look like and what needs to change. I will do so by presenting ways of defining educational sectors which may be useful to the panel in answering the first question: what is the tertiary education sector. I will then say something about types of tertiary education institution. Ways of defining tertiary education By source of funding The education sectors were first defined in Australia by governments, mainly the Australian government, to delineate funding responsibility. Thus, the Australian Government first identified universities as a sector when it started contributing to their standard running costs in 1951. Universities were easily identified and the Australian Government did not initially distinguish between levels of programs offered by universities, which included sub-graduate diplomas and certificates which were 22% of universities’ enrolments but almost no research higher degrees as late as 1959. The Australian Government offered to contribute to the running costs of newly established colleges of advanced education in 1964, but these had to be separated organisationally from the technical colleges from which some of them had been formed. The Martin Committee and the Universities Commission enjoined universities to stop offering diplomas which were to be the distinctive program of colleges of advanced education. The Australian Government offered capital grants and special purpose recurrent grants to newly established colleges of technical and further education in 1975, but these had to be separated organisationally from secondary education which many if not all technical colleges offered. One possibility would be to continue defining sectors by governments’ financing responsibility, but I presume not many would do that. By institution Some people define tertiary education by institution. Thus, some define vocational education as the education offered by institutions that are commonly accepted as vocational education and training institutions, and higher education as the education offered by institutions that are commonly accepted as higher education institutions. By program Some people define tertiary education by program. The most widely used but by no means best classification of programs is the 1997 edition of UNESCO’s international standard classification of education. This distinguishes between level 4 - post-secondary non-tertiary education which in Australia includes certificates I, II, III, IV, from level 5B - first stage of tertiary education (practical/vocational) which includes Australian diplomas and advanced diplomas. Tafe Directors Australia and Universities Australia define tertiary education as ISCED levels 5B and above, that is, ISCED’s first and second stages of tertiary education comprising diplomas and above. But I suggest