Abstract
The vocational education and training (VET) sector plays a crucial role in Australia’s education system. Associated closely between the VET provision and industry, VET training quality is continually at the heart of debates in the process of implementing the Australian VET reform agenda. In response of key themes of this reform process, investigating the training efficiency of VET through the linked efficiency between teaching and industry responsiveness is imperative. The paper aims to address this objective by using the dynamic network data envelopment analysis in a balanced panel data for 2008–2012. This advanced model allows to assess simultaneously the efficiency of two nodes, teaching and industry responsiveness, and the overall dynamic training efficiency of VET based on fields of education in a network structure. We found that the overall training efficiency of VET is, on average, 0.835 while the mean divisional efficiencies of the teaching efficiency and industry responsiveness are 0.763 and 0.908, respectively. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to examine dynamic changes of the efficiency of the teaching and industry linkage following various period weights. Policy implications are drawn for the Australian VET sector.
Highlights
The vocational education and training (VET) sector plays a crucial role in a nation’s education system and has been the theme of reform in many countries over the world (Chappell 2003)
One of the VET reform initiatives implemented by the Australian Industry and Skills Committee (AISC) which were agreed to by CISC (COAG (Council of Australian Governments) Industry and Skills Council) in November 2015 is to improve the efficiency of the training system by creating units that can be owned and used by multiple industry sectors (National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) 2017, p.1)
Our findings show that the VET overall efficiency score is, on average, 0.835, relatively in line with the overall technical efficiency found in Victorian technical and further education (TAFE) institutes at 0.852 (Abbott and Doucouliagos 2002), but being less than the teaching efficiency found in Fieger et al (2017) at 0.904 using the stochastic frontier analysis
Summary
The vocational education and training (VET) sector plays a crucial role in a nation’s education system and has been the theme of reform in many countries over the world (Chappell 2003). In Australia, numerous studies have been conducted to peruse operational and cost efficiency and productivity growth of higher education institutions such as Avkiran (2001), Abbott and Doucouliagos (2003), Carrington, Coelli and Rao (2005), Lee (2011), Worthington and Higgs (2011), Lee and Worthington (2016), Zhang and Worthington (2017), Carrington et al (2018) and the like. These studies to some extent provided useful information to educational managers and policy makers in designing more appropriate policies and regulations to enhance university performance. One of the VET reform initiatives implemented by the Australian Industry and Skills Committee (AISC) which were agreed to by CISC (COAG (Council of Australian Governments) Industry and Skills Council) in November 2015 is to improve the efficiency of the training system by creating units that can be owned and used by multiple industry sectors (National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) 2017, p.1)
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