The Role Of Microcredentials In Workforce Upskilling
Troy Williams
Chief Executive at the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA).
When the Australian Government’s ground-breaking Jobs And Skills Summit convenes next month, the role of microcredentials in the upskilling of the Australian workforce will be critical to delivering outcomes of discussions associated with workforce productivity.
Led by the Prime Minister and the Treasurer, and supported by other key ministers, the Summit will recommend immediate actions and opportunities for medium and long-term reform. A key focus of the Summit will be on opportunities to improve workforce productivity to address skills shortages and drive a sustainable wage increase.
Although the skilling of new entrants to the workforce is critical to supporting businesses in acquiring new skilled employees, this alone will not address the skills shortage. To this end, the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA) has advised the Australian Government that the Summit strongly emphasises the reskilling of existing workers given the disparity between the demand for skills and new workforce entrants.
According to the McKinsey Global Institute report, Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation, roughly 14% of the global workforce may need to switch occupational categories as digitisation, automation, and advances in artificial intelligence disrupt the world of work. This data highlights the critical role of independent tertiary education providers in reskilling existing workers. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show that in 2020-2021 around 7.8 million Australians aged 15 to 74 undertook some form of learning and 5.1 million of these undertook non-formal learning, much of it in the form of microcredentials as defined in the new National Microcredentials Framework. In addition, the National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER) publishes data each year on the prevalence of students undertaking training that does not form part of a nationally accredited program. For instance, in 2020, 2.47 million students enrolled in these subjects and 92.5% were supported by an independent skills training provider.
The data shows that microcredentials are a vital tool in the crucial task of reskilling and upskilling existing workers, giving them additional skills and knowledge to be more efficient in their work, to take on new responsibilities, or to transition to a new job.
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ITECA has had several discussions with the Australian Government on the structure and agenda of the Summit. The role of the tertiary education sector is set to feature prominently in the Summit's discussions associated with supporting new workforce entrants and upskilling existing workers. It is in connection with the latter that ITECA has tendered advice to the Australian Government that microcredentials are well suited to providing existing employees with new knowledge and skills to assist them to improve their productivity or to help them transition to a new role.
The economic challenges before the nation are considerable. The Summit will focus on various issues ranging from immigration, workplace relations and the role of the tertiary education sector. ITECA’s focus has been on positioning the independent skills training and higher education sectors to play a lead role in progressing the outcomes of the Summit, something made possible thanks to the great support of our members.
ITECA Membership – It’s a great time to get involved.
Troy Williams, ITECA Chief Executive
Senior Adviser (Media and Skills Policy) to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition
2yGreat contribution Troy! It’s clear microcredentials will play an important role as we build and evolve our workforce. I look forward to hearing more from ITECA and members about the work you are doing in this space!
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2yThe Australian: "Chalmers unveiled is a full-term battle against inflation – forecast to peak at 7.75 per cent late this year. He told the parliament of inflation: “The current expectation is that it will get worse this year (2022), moderate next year (2023) and normalise the year after (2024).” Treasury expects by mid-2024 that headline inflation will be “back inside” the Reserve Bank’s 2-3 per cent target zone." Some quick math - 2021 - 2024 inflation rates as occuring & forecast - compounded over the 4 years prices will go up over 20% to end 2024. And that's arguably optimistic given the rampant inflation at present. How will Tertiary Education providers cope with such scale of price increases? What does a "sustainable wage increase" look like - 20% wages increase over 4 years just to keep up with inflation? Or we're noting that tertiary workforces need to expect real wage decline over the forward period? For VET, are governments looking at 20% increases in subsidy / funding contract rates across the board over the period? Or the funding of VET in real terms will continue to decline as it has for most of the past decade? 1 of 2