AUSTRALIA

Boom time for industry-focused short courses

An exponential growth in demand for mini, industry-specific and co-designed courses is boosting student numbers in international student-deprived Australian universities but has experts calling for a coherent policy framework, writes Julie Hare for Australian Financial Review.

The diversity in approach to the hundreds of short, stackable courses that are coming on line could be confounding to students and employers.

Professor Beverley Oliver, Australia’s foremost expert on microcredentials, said there is a very real danger of confusion as institutions adopt different terminologies and value propositions. “We need to figure out what we are trying to achieve,” Oliver said.
Full report on the AFR site