Could SaaS be the business enabler VET institutions need to increase enrolments and help beat Australia’s skills gap?

Federal and State Governments have turned their focus to vocational education and training to help fix Australia’s skills shortage and support economic recovery and growth after COVID.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in the latest education and training census (2021), more than 600,000 people chose vocational education, including TAFEs, as the next step in their student career, whereas more than 1.1 million people chose university. With a lot of job positions requiring university qualifications, universities attract the lions’ share – in the STEM sector alone, this is seen across 90 per cent of advertisements1.

The number of vocational education enrolments is not increasing, in fact it’s quite the opposite. Despite the initiatives, like fee-free TAFE, being implemented across Australia to support more skills in our workforce, between 2021 and 2022, enrolment in VET courses dropped 3.3 percent.

The concern is that we have an increasing demand across the country for skills in critical and growing sectors like energy, digital and care – skills that were often developed via vocational training. In Queensland, it was recently announced the state is now more than 25 per cent powered by renewable energy and that’s only going to increase, so we need skilled workers to keep up with demand.

At the 2023 National Tech Summit, it was revealed that with an aim to grow the pipeline of skilled workers and pathways, Australia is expected to achieve 1 million tech sector jobs by 2025.

In the care sector, one of the major challenges impacting the workforce is the growing ageing population due to people living longer. In aged care alone, the increase in demand for services will require skilled workforce.

There is no doubt energy, digital and care industries are becoming major drivers for Australia’s economy. The VET sector has a major role to play if we are to meet ambitious productivity targets and futureproof our economy. Universities are not the ones training the next generation of aged and allied care workers, solar and battery installers or coders and cybersecurity experts.

The Federal Government has already exceeded the 300,000 TAFE VET places funded in the last budget by 214,000 in the first six months. The effort to encourage enrolment, upskill the country and future-proof our economy is working; however, these organisations now need to be able to keep up with demand and operate efficiently. More students, means more staff, and more data and complexity. For this reason, the technology at the core of an institution has never been more important. But the reality is, technology used as an answer to solve specific needs and achieve various goals is not as powerful as technology applied as a business enabler for the entire institution’s success.

Technology is a way of storing, moving, manipulating and presenting data to support the processes on which TAFEs and other institutions run admissions, enrolments, timetabling, payroll, budgeting, asset and estate management. With the right technology, a business can run smoothly and provide a great student and staff experience.

Data is the key and running servers and big IT estates is not central to an institution’s purpose, in fact it is an expensive and risky pursuit. Software as a Service, which allows access to software on a subscription basis using external servers, is the right answer.

Storing data in disparate back-office IT systems doesn’t help institutions run more effectively, it just serves its singular purpose and clogs the arteries of insight. An integrated system across student management, finance, payroll and asset management can deliver the world-class experience students and staff deserve.

TechnologyOne is the leading vendor of student management solutions to the Australian tertiary education sector. Our software is used by two out of every three Australian TAFEs, and almost half of Australian universities, including La Trobe University and Queensland University of Technology. We offer the only dedicated software solution created specifically for the dual education sector.  Since partnering with our first education customers in 1990, we have listened to the needs of the higher education sector and come up with solutions to complex problems, so we can make our customers’ and their students’ and staff’s lives simple and ultimately help build a stronger Australia for the future.