Rethinking Tertiary Education: Building on the Work of Peter Noonan makes a strong case for an overhaul of Australia’s tertiary education system, drawing on Peter Noonan’s scholarship and the work of his expert colleagues and collaborators. Photo: Supplied.
The time has come to address the divide between vocational and higher education in Australia and implement a reform agenda that has been in development over the past decade. So say editors Peter Dawkins, Megan Lilly and Robert Pascoe.
The central figure in the development of this policy agenda was Peter Noonan, professor of Tertiary Education at Victoria University, who died in May 2022 after 40 years as Australia’s leading tertiary education policy thinker and adviser to both sides of government.
Inspired by Professor Noonan’s (1955-2022) lifetime of service to tertiary education policy, this book makes a robust case for an overhaul of Australia’s tertiary education system, drawing on his scholarship and the work of his expert colleagues and collaborators.
When Australians think about tertiary education, their minds typically turn to universities. They need to think more broadly.
Expert editors Peter Dawkins, Megan Lilly and Robert Pascoe say when people think about tertiary education, they should not forget the large number of public and private vocational education and training (VET) providers across the nation.
As it stands in the 2020s, the university and VET sectors do not come together into a coherent tertiary system – and that needs to change. All the while we also have to remember that the role of tertiary education has changed.
“We are not making the case for a merger of vocational education and higher education,” they said. ”Rather, we are arguing for a harmonisation of vocational and higher education into one coherent system: two sectors, one system. There has been growing interest in harmonising vocational and higher education into a more coherent system of tertiary education over the past decade, of which Peter Noonan was a leading advocate.”
This book outlines the case for such harmonisation, the challenges in its way, and how it can be achieved, drawing heavily on Professor Noonan’s contribution to the discussion. Rethinking Tertiary Education has been put together to make a major contribution to the debate about the role that tertiary education needs to play in promoting Australia’s future economic prosperity and in enhancing social outcomes and greater equality of opportunity.
“We are in a period of serious skills shortages and low productivity growth, and a period in which government is seeking to decarbonise the economy. These major challenges facing Australia must be confronted with ambitious and determined reform of the institutions and services that underpin its economic, social and environmental development.
”Tertiary education, both vocational and higher, is clearly critical to Australia’s success in meeting these challenges, and must simultaneously learn to develop itself, in far-reaching ways, to meet the needs and potential of a future Australia. Government is thinking seriously about the policy settings that will assist this process.”
A passionate advocate for the role of tertiary education in transforming people’s lives, Professor Noonan’s influence on tertiary education policy in Australia over 40 years as a policy adviser, researcher and powerful advocate to government was unparalleled. He was a policymaker who drove key reforms. This long-form publication outlines a systematic approach to the reform agenda, providing a significant and opportune analysis of tertiary education in Australia.
The authors have impressive credentials. Dawkins was vice-chancellor and president of Victoria University from 2011 to 2020, where he introduced the revolutionary ”block model” of teaching and learning. Lilly is a leading figure in education and training policy, and Pascoe is a well-known author and history professor at Victoria University.
Rethinking Tertiary Education: Building on the Work of Peter Noonan, edited by Peter Dawkins, Megan Lilly and Robert Pascoe, Melbourne University Press, $40.
