With the recent amendment to the Australian Qualification Framework to introduce a new vocational undergraduate degree qualification, new research from Japan exploring vocational undergraduate degrees in Germany, China and Japan is relevant as Australia embarks on developing our new vocational undergraduate degrees.
The study looks at best practices from Germany, Japan, and China, and identifies that the best model for vocational undergraduate degrees emphasise several core strategies.
The first of these strategies are well aligned to existing practices in the Australian VET sector:
- Industry-academia collaboration: Close partnerships between providers and industries to ensure coursework aligns with real-world skills needs.
- Competence-based education: Focusing on developing practical competencies and professional literacy, not just theoretical knowledge.
However, the research also identifies that these new vocational undergraduate degrees should also be focused on some practices which are not currently common in Australian VET. They are:
- Interdisciplinary integration: Blending curricula across different fields of education to foster broad competencies.
- Certification alignment: Aligning programs with industry certifications to boost graduates’ employability.
The report’s author, Prof. Huang from Hiroshima University, found that implementing these approaches leads to more flexible curricula for the degrees and that when combined with extensive practical training and robust evaluation systems, vocational degrees produce highly skilled graduates equipped for the demands of the modern workforce.
The research report also includes links to a large number of studies on the nature and extent of vocational education and training across Asia, which may be of interest to some readers.
