Australia’s tertiary education sector take a significant step into the future on GenAI

In the last 6 weeks ASQA and TEQSA have each taken a significant step forward in relation to GenAI. Their actions will transform education in both the higher education and VET sectors.

But in saying that both regulators have taken a significant step – it should not be assumed that their steps start from the same place, and I once again wish to acknowledge how impressive TEQSA has been with respect to steering the higher education sector’s adaptation to a world of GenAI.

TEQSA

As TEQSA notes in their latest e-News – it is almost four years since generative AI was launched and made publicly available.

What TEQSA is too modest to say is that, in the intervening period, they have been at the forefront globally of helping higher education providers understand the risks, challenges and benefits of AI – and helped Australian higher education providers adapt and respond to the risks and challenges.

They are also too modest to say that they have done this exemplary work in conjunction with the providers they regulate, and have developed a Generative AI Knowledge Hub which contains an incredible range of more than 50 free resources.

Understandably, against this backdrop and the development of a toolkit for the sector, Gen AI strategies for Australian higher education: Emerging practice, TEQSA has now decided that the time for a purely educative approach needs to cease, and they need to step more strongly into a regulatory approach to GenAI in higher education.

As they noted:

For higher education providers who have been working proactively on GenAI, contributing to the resources being developed in the sector, attending and engaging in the various webinars that have been hosted (and another one scheduled for next week), this shift from TEQSA is to be welcomed not feared.

Given the prevalence of GenAI in all aspects of teaching, assessment, research – and in the workplaces higher education institutions prepare students for, as well as in their own institutions – this shift is a must and a sign that GenAI is becoming BAU (business as usual) – and that we all need to come to grips with it.

ASQA
Unlike TEQSA – it took ASQA until April 2025 to issue ANY advice on GenAI to the providers it regulates.

And even after including comments on GenAI in its April newsletter – ASQA has still not yet developed any resources for the VET sector, not held any information sessions, not provided any toolkits to the sector, and not conducted any webinars to answer providers’ questions.

Still while it is an incredibly long way behind the work being done by TEQSA, ASQA has at least taken a first step, and in its April 2025 ASQA-IQ newsletter it has provided advice to the sector on assessment integrity and GenAI (as well as advice on another integrity issue – contract cheating).

ASQA’s advice on GenAI included the following:

It went on to provide useful advice on how to think about GenAI when designing and conducting assessment – and aligned the advice to the principles of assessment and rules of evidence.

The newsletter also makes the following observation about how GenAI is changing the world of work and the obligations on providers – including specifically when dealing with “pre-generative AI” training packages:

This is a VERY significant statement from ASQA. It provides enormous opportunities for the many high quality, industry-engaged providers to move beyond the limits of national training packages – and to deliver industry-relevant, contemporary skills and knowledge.

It is going to take many of ASQA’s auditors/assessors a long time to feel comfortable with this new explicit requirement being placed on VET providers – but it is a necessity for the sector to move in this direction. As the Vice Chancellor of La Trobe University, Prof. Theo Farrell, observed, we are “experiencing the equivalence of the Industrial Revolution, just at 10 x normal speed”.

It was an issue I first wrote about in an Opinion Piece in the Australian Financial Review in February 2023 – when it was already evident that in at least the areas of business, IT and the creative industries, the current training package model would not be sufficient to ensure VET graduates went into the workplace with current skills.

To date none of those training packages have been updated – although Services and Creative Skills Australia do understand the risks and have been leading the sector in both VET qualifications reform (which should make changes to training packages a less burdensome, more responsive, process) and they have recently completed a ‘Scoping Study’ of workforce issues in the Creative Workforce – which includes acknowledgement of how GenAI and other forms of technology are transforming work in this sector.

Likewise Future Skills Organisation commissioned work, published in June 2024, to analyse which of its training package qualifications are most exposed to GenAI.

As a result of that work they are making changes to the following qualifications:
• BSB50620 Diploma of Marketing and Communication
• BSB60520 Advanced Diploma of Marketing and Communication
• BSB60220 Advanced Diploma of Conveyancing
• FNS51220 Diploma of Insurance Broking

However, because of the time involved in designing the necessary changes and then consulting and crucially getting agreement on them – at the time of writing – none of those qualifications have yet been updated and this is the flaw in the training package model in a period of profound change.

In that February 2023 OpEd piece, I started by reflecting on how Training Packages came into being:

I went on to argue that:

And offered the following conclusion:

Self-accreditation is currently being trialled in the sector by a small number of TAFE Institutes but only for new qualifications linked to the TAFE Centres of Excellence.

Instead of going down a broader self-accreditation path, the government, through ASQA, has chosen to empower all providers to keep their own courses updated and to move beyond what is contained in the national Training Package if that is what industry demonstrably needs.

In theory that has always been what VET should be doing but all of you reading this who have worked in VET providers know – that is not what has previously been deemed acceptable at audit. Instead the lived reality of the sector has been an almost fanatical requirement to comply with the narrow strictures of units of competency in national training packages, irrespective of changes occurring in industry.

Well not any more. Now the regulator is trying to help the sector pick up the speed and move quickly – to respond to the 10 x normal Industrial Revolution speed – and to make sure VET retains its currency and relevance.

The opportunities for leading VET providers to offer the contemporary training businesses need – and to do so in a quality manner and backed up by the issuance of AQF qualifications, is a huge step forward.

Eventually I think the training package model in some industries will need to be replaced with mechanisms more akin to those in higher education where leading providers have self-accrediting status and professional associations (or in the case of VET – Jobs and Skills Councils) have a role in ensuring the quality and relevance of the courses on offer but without narrowly mandating content.

For now though there is a lot to be excited by in ASQA’s announcement and combined with the TEQSA announcement – both regulators are looking to a very different future of tertiary education and preparing learners for their future careers.

————————————

Disclaimer: Claire was a member of the technical committee providing advice to SaCSA during their 2024 VET Qualification Reform project.