A tertiary qualification from Australia’s most prestigious universities are amongst some of the most highly sought after worldwide. As a result, our education sector as a whole attracts great interest from international students of all ages and study backgrounds. From BA and MBA cohorts to more technical degrees and qualifications, Australian students are learning alongside their international peers.
But with high demand and the fact that international students are required to pay their course fees upfront and even work reduced hours as per the restrictions on their student visas, does this system actually work? Instead, our tertiary institutes have become commodified, focusing more on onboarding new students and less on ensuring they can put their qualifications to work in Australia. So what’s the solution?
The Federal Government came up with a few on their own, like including more vocational roles on CSOL (the Core Skills Occupation List). But do we have skills shortages in these roles? It’s arguable.
There are also still very real issues surrounding the cap on working hours for students on student visas. With a maximum of 48 working hours during any fortnight, international students are being forced to bear all the upfront costs of full-time study in Australia, but aren’t provided with the economic infrastructure they need to provide for themselves while they’re here. And on top of all of this, our very real skills shortages across the healthcare and education sectors (for starters) continue to go unaddressed.
It’s clear that education reform could help fill in the gaps here, and online learning may just help make Australian tertiary education not only more accessible to both local and international students but also more sustainable for students who are ineligible for HECS-HELP.
Cost-effective compared to on-campus courses
eLearning technology has made virtually all tertiary course content accessible to remote students. Using eLearning allowances like student portals, video conferencing, and other types of learning software, remote students can tackle virtually any undergraduate or postgraduate degree – from a Bachelor of Engineering to an online MBA.
Alongside being accessible, online courses are also often more cost-effective in a few different ways. Not only do they reduce the strain on on-campus student accommodation and reduce classroom sizes to ensure improved resources for students who are learning on campus, but they also help students avoid having to get on a working student visa altogether by undertaking Australian courses online while they’re perhaps still living overseas.
This removes the arbitrary cap on student working hours, ensuring that students can maintain a financial capacity to pay for their course enrolments without having to take on odd jobs.
Sustainable study for those on restrictive student visas
Reducing the pressures of visa compliance is just one way that online courses provide more sustainable learning pathways for students worldwide. Whilst some online courses do follow the same semester structure of on-campus learning, most eLearning offerings are still self-paced, which means students can complete all their modules and assessments at their own leisure.
This means that highly motivated students can actually get their qualifications faster. These students can then upskill with other eLearning courses or even apply for work placements around Australia. Isn’t this a better method for directly addressing skills shortages rather than just accepting as many student visa applications as possible without providing adequate infrastructure for these students upon arrival?
In this regard, the development of industry-focused self-paced online courses holds just as many benefits for Australia’s economy as it does for students worldwide. Students with additional commitments (i.e. full-time work abroad or caring for family, etc.) can gain qualifications more sustainably than if they were on a student visa, and they can then use these qualifications to gain direct and focused access to the professional roles and sectors they can actually contribute to in more meaningful ways.
Potential pathways for direct work placements
Australia’s labour market has been under significant strain since the COVID-19 pandemic, when the unemployment and underemployment rate recorded by Roy Morgan Research jumped to a record high of 27.4%. The past five years have been a pursuit to correct those rates, and we’ve largely succeeded. But as recent data reveals unemployment and underemployment trending slowly upwards again, it may be an indicator that our education sector to labour market pipeline has fallen back into its old inefficiencies.
What we need are more tailored professional pathways directly into our most under-resourced sectors. In other words, we need greater collaboration between tertiary institutions and commercial and industry partners to facilitate more graduate opportunities.
We’re already seeing initiatives like this that are delivering great results, like Teach For Australia. Alongside providing more accessible pathways for tertiary students studying education, TFA have also been able to facilitate teacher placements in regional areas, addressing regional skills shortages in a meaningful way.
The great news here is that we can offer exactly these studies to work models with online courses as well. Australian tertiary institutions can use their pre-existing industry networks to offer direct work placements that are even available for online students. And much like TFA works nationwide, these direct work placements can be offered directly in regions that require those services the most.
Online learning can aid in honing digital skills too
Undertaking any tertiary course in Australia naturally requires a certain level of foundational knowledge. For local students, completion of Year 12 or Cert III or IV qualifications is typically mandatory for eligibility to enrol in undergraduate courses. For international students, completion of secondary education is also essential, alongside English proficiency qualifications like IELTS examinations.
As Australian classrooms become increasingly technological, however, digital skills are also rapidly being regarded as foundational for tertiary students. Online courses can’t be completed without these digital skills either, which means that we can expect most students who have completed online courses to possess both strong English language skills as well as technological proficiency.
Harnessing eLearning to improve Australia’s education sector
Ultimately, the primary objective of reform in Australia’s education system is to make sure that our graduates are better equipped to enter the workforce and have improved chances of gaining employment in roles that they’ve expressly trained for. Online courses can play a vital role in filling in the gaps in Australia’s education system, supporting a quality standard for higher education for both on-campus and remote students. And with this added quality and improved, focused access to the labour market, online courses could be the ticket to combating genuine recorded skills shortages across Australia’s most under-resourced industries and sectors.