Australian higher education risks being sidelined at what is billed as the biggest policy development forum in years, as the federal government accentuates the vocational side of tertiary education.

No higher education representatives have been invited to the vaunted “economic reform roundtable”, a Canberra gathering of business and community leaders, lobbyists, unionists, policy advisers, civil servants and politicians.

Scheduled for 19 to 21 August in Parliament House, and designed to build consensus for long-term reform, it is the first get-together of its type since the Jobs and Skills Summit of September 2022.

A supplementary list of invitees to individual sessions, on topics such as geopolitics, investment and competition, also includes no university representatives. But Jobs and Skills Australia commissioner Barney Glover has been enlisted for a two-hour session on “skills attraction, development and mobility”.

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Glover has chastised universities for failing to produce with the employability, communication and leadership skills desired by employers. “Someone who’s…fresh out of a university degree programme [needs] to have had pretty good work experience and work-integrated learning, and that’s one of those areas where I think universities have got to be doing more,” Glover told .

“University students have every right to be concerned if they don’t believe they’re getting enough work experience and exposure. If students aren’t getting it, they should certainly be saying something to their universities.”

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The comments could add to a sense that universities are out of favour with a government more keen on TAFEs, Australia’s public vocational colleges. Training minister Andrew Giles has advocated a focus on practical skills in the lead-up to the round table. “We’ve got to get better at valuing work that’s important regardless of the qualification pathway that leads you there,” he told .

Giles and education minister Jason Clare are hosting an 8 August get-together of university, TAFE and private college representatives in preliminary talks ostensibly designed to feed into the round table.

Three also released to inform round-table discussions suggest a focus on training rather than higher learning. The word “skills” appears 14 times compared with just two mentions of “universities” and one of “research and development”.

But a source said the focus on skills could reflect a federal government desire to handball expensive reform ideas to the states, which fund vocational education. Universities and research are federal responsibilities.

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Regional Universities Network chief executive Alec Webb said neither sector should be prioritised over the other, because skills shortages were universal. “Some…are what you would consider traditional skills from the TAFE and vocational sectors. Others are from the universities. Increasingly, people are going to need technical know-how as much as they’re going to need analysis and critical thinking. The question is, how do you reconcile those two needs at the same time?”

While university sector representatives have been left off the round table’s invitation list, two chancellors – Macquarie University’s Martin Parkinson and Western Sydney University’s Jennifer Westacott – are supplementary invitees to the skills session featuring Glover, himself a former university vice-chancellor. Griffith University chancellor Andrew Fraser, a former Queensland treasurer, also featured in an earlier invitation list issued in mid-July. The four will bring considerable knowledge of higher education as well as business, government and tax.

Consultant Claire Field said the round table would be “a really important meeting to set the agenda” for future reform. But she questioned whether it would deliver meaningful progress for either vocational or higher education.

“We’re going to need more nimbleness in both sectors to improve productivity and help employers and workers with the changing world of work,” said Field, a former regulator and private college representative body head. “That’s not evident yet in the documents that have been released.”

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john.ross@timeshighereducation.com