But we can only harness this opportunity if enough ‘users’ — students, careers counsellors, curriculum designers, workforce planners — benefit from the agreed language.
The Australian Academy of the Humanities has offered a way forward that:
- prioritises agreement on language for transferable skills, to get the process (and the economy) moving, while,
- sets up a national convergence over time, through central skills categories, that can produce a comprehensive skills taxonomy that makes sense on the ground, facilitates career development, and helps to build economic complexity.
We thank Jobs and Skills Australia for the opportunity to contribute to shaping a new National Skills Taxonomy (NST), to replace the Australian Skills Classification (ASC).
We know that humanities graduates have high-value, cross-cutting and transferable skills, which need better visibility and definition. This will benefit the graduates, university and vocational education, employers and policymakers.
Our submission proposes practical steps towards a national language on skills that will support objectives that have been prominent in consultations to date: structural adjustment in the economy, productivity, wellbeing and national security.
The Academy sees an opportunity to draw on humanities higher education experts to get the taxonomy right, so that it achieves its aim of joining up the tertiary sector and connecting it to workplaces.
