Australia’s tertiary education system should place greater emphasis on recognising the skills and capabilities people possess, rather than relying solely on qualifications as signals of workforce readiness.
A new occasional paper called Skills, Mobility and Productivity: Why Australia needs a skills-first tertiary education system, argues that a stronger focus on skills is essential as the labour market adapts to major changes including artificial intelligence, digital transformation, population ageing and the transition to a net-zero economy.
The paper does not propose replacing qualifications such as degrees and certificates. Instead, it calls for stronger connections between skills and qualifications, so that qualifications communicate the skills, knowledge and capabilities they represent, making them more useful for learners, employers and the broader labour market.
The report also considers how fragmentation across the tertiary system, spanning schools, vocational education and training, higher education and industry, can make it harder for people to move between study and work, have their skills recognised, and build on prior learning.
To address these challenges, the paper outlines a set of system-level reforms to improve how skills are described, recognised and transferred. These include:
- developing a shared skills language through the National Skills Taxonomy
- improving the visibility of skills alongside qualifications
- strengthening recognition of prior learning and experience
- expanding multidirectional credit transfer across the tertiary system.
A more joined-up, human-centred, skills-first system would support greater mobility, fairness and productivity. It would particularly benefit people who develop skills through non-traditional pathways, including work, volunteering and caring responsibilities.
