The research vacuum in commonwealth policy on technical and further education

Abstract

The questions outlined in this paper are but some which come to mind in exploring the variety of proposals put forward by the Commonwealth in its plans for the future of TAFE. Many others could be raised — on schemes for private sector training, the introduction of market forces into public sector institutions and the public subsidization of private sector trainers, TAFE staff productivity and facilities utilization, to take a few examples. What has been attempted here is to select issues which are fundamental to the development of a rational basis for the Commonwealth’s policy initiatives. Not only does the federal government lack crucial evidence for decision-making, it has largely deprived itself of the means of gaining it, as a result of its disestablishment of the Bureau of Labour Market Research and the dispersal of the research capacities of the former Department of Education and Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission. Parallel to this has been the dramatic decline in resources for independent research. At a time when systematic research has become the basis for many key areas of public policy — for example, the Bureau of Industry Economics, the Bureau of Resource and Agricultural Economics, Treasury’s in-house facilities — Education remains a dilettante’s preserve.