Excerpts
Numerous Australian universities, including Southern Cross University (SCU), based in northern New South Wales with branches in most states, are offering students a Graduate Diploma in Early Childhood Education that can be completed in less than a year.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) obtained documents and information from former and current SCU employees that illustrate how the federal Labor government’s policies are pushing universities into short-cut vocational courses, using students as cash cows.
Other public universities offering a one-year (in effect 10-month) graduate diploma include Melbourne’s Victoria University, Central Queensland University, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Edith Cowan University, Griffith University and University of Southern Queensland.
Private operators are also cashing in on intensifying staffing shortages in childcare centres. The ABC reported that nine new graduate diplomas in early childhood education have been approved by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) in the past year, with six being offered through private providers.
All these courses have received accreditation from the Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (ACECQA).
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The childcare staffing crisis and the response by universities and other training operators have the same root cause, the capitalist profit system, which demands that even the most fundamental right to education, from early childhood to tertiary education, be turned to a source of profit.
In Australia, as elsewhere, successive governments, whether Labor or Liberal-National, have gutted public funding for education and training. At the same time, they have actively encouraged a rapid expansion of the private training sector and forced the chronically-underfunded public universities to become ever more dependent on international student fees.
Childcare should not be a luxury or a business opportunity. Nor should the education of childcare workers. The provision of high-quality education and training for all students should be a basic social right. And childcare education, like all education, should be in the hands of well-qualified teachers and support staff.
The Socialist Equality Party also upholds the right of workers from every country to live and work wherever they choose, with full legal, democratic and citizenship rights. First-class higher education and training must be available to all, free of all fees.