Course costs skyrocket – Confusing choices await students

This guide is for full time study only, and does not cover Certificate III courses which are generally aimed at traineeships. It does not cover qualifications awarded by RPL (recognized prior learning) or RCC (recognized current competencies).

Students looking for a career backstage need to be careful. A higher education degree (or diploma) is radically different in nature to a Vocational (VET) certificate, diploma or advanced diploma. Higher Education (HE) was the province of universities until a decade ago when private colleges (registered training organisations or RTOs) were allowed into the sector.

Worse still, often the best student has trouble meeting the competency standards for one or several units. VET courses contain a cluster of inflexible core units, such as ‘Incorporate creative and technical needs into management processes’ or ‘Develop, implement and maintain WHS management systems’.

A VET course is always loaded with more ‘core’ units than electives – and the word elective here is only relevant for the college (RTO), which chooses how to structure the ‘elective’ side of the course. For example the Advanced Diploma of Live Production and Management Services (course code CUA60213) has eight core and only six elective units.

This means a student is buried in core units more often than electives – and six electives may not necessarily produce enough practical technical training.

There is only one RTO delivering the Advanced Diploma, and it allows a speciality. But again the available elective units in the national training package (CUA) mean that the sound speciality, for example, contains these: [above]

The breakup of these units leaves a student well short of basic audio knowledge, despite the Advanced Diploma carrying an audio specialty. This isn’t a problem specific to WAAPA, rather it is a failing of the whole vocational training framework which has degenerated into ‘one size ts all’ where Advanced Diploma courses in completely different industry sectors must carry similar core units. Examples: ‘Develop and manage a budget’ and ‘Manage Projects’, leaving not enough time for industry specific training.

In Higher Education the uni or college have the freedom to structure their Diploma or Degree programs as they see fit – and apply their own marking and pass regimes. Although they stridently deny this, I believe they carry less compliance costs than an RTO delivering a VET course.

For students this means an easier pass, where a degree may only require 51%. The competency scheme in VET training requires each student be assessed several times, usually via tasks and tests, across each subject (unit); and if found ‘Not Yet Competent’ given the chance to redo the assessment tasks or test component that they failed.

What is best for the student? Either system carries compromises, especially if the provider uni or college or RTO has little industry credibility. In April CX surveyed 500 industry folk and published the results. Read about it at cxmagblog.com on this link:

http://cxmagblog.com/2015/04/17/minimum-technical-skills/

The survey can be read from the article link on the blog. It is fairly damning of many training providers, in particular SAE – which has the greatest number of graduates as it has been operating for three decades and is now worldwide. JMC and AIM followed SAE to market with similar courseware, based on the fundamental that a student, usually direct from high school, will not be aware of the extreme difficulty transforming a qualification into a job.

HURDLES

Additional complication comes from understanding the various courses. VET courses from the CUA training package carry CUA at the start of the code. Courses from the Music training package are sometimes sold as ‘Sound production. These carry the code CUS. CX does not regard any CUS course as industry suitable for professional live audio work. Bachelor Degree courses also mix up ‘music production’ with live sound. Music Production skills do not usually lead to employment outcomes in live production, theatre and events.

First published in CX Magazine (November, 2015)