Tasmania's tertiary education partnership

Governments around the world are moving to boost participation in tertiary education. In Australia the participation agenda informed the 2008 Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education recommendation that closer alignment of vocational and higher education be implemented as part of a strategy for increasing the proportion of low SES, regional, and Indigenous graduates. Although in recent years both coalition and labor federal governments have moved away from some of the Bradley recommendations, there remains a broad desire to increase participation in higher education. However, growing budget constraints have forced higher education sector players to pursue innovative partnerships that transcend traditional distinctions between universities and vocational training centres and between federally funded institutions and those resourced by the states. The evolving partnership between the University of Tasmania and the state's VET suppliers provides an example of successful co-production of education in a previously fragmented policy arena. The partnership's initial success can be attributed to the fact it has delivered what Mark Moore, in 1995, called 'public value' in that it mobilised institutional resources and organisational capability in pursuit of widely recognised policy goals. In these terms, the partnership represents a useful model of relevance beyond the higher education sector. The Bradley Review outlined proposals designed to raise overall participation in tertiary education with a particular emphasis on increasing educational opportunities for students from low socio-economic backgrounds. These aims are particularly pertinent in Tasmania given its low rates of participation in higher education and poor performance against key educational outcomes -especially in reading, scientific literacy, and numeracy. Given this context and amid a growing determination to improve tertiary education outcomes, in 2012 the University of Tasmania and the Tasmanian Government signed a partnership agreement that included a commitment to work together to increase educational attainment in the state