Call for tertiary education shake-up

TRACEY Hodgkins is on a mission to turn the education system on its head.

The Telstra WA 2005 Business Woman of the Year, social entrepreneur and education expert told WA Business News that if the education system stayed as it is, we would end up with a whole society of disengaged learners.

“In most universities, you listen to a lecturer for three hours and at the end you write essays or do reports.

“So what you’re learning doesn’t translate into something that’s doable, and what’s happening is that kids are coming out of university and they can’t apply what they have learnt because it doesn’t make any sense.”

Having proved her business acumen as a band manager and owner of a successful design company, Ms Hodgkins decided to enter Curtin University in 2003 as a mature age student. Yet she quickly came to realise that there was nothing that effectively bridged the gap between work and the classroom.

“So I designed some programs and with the support of former Curtin vice chancellor, Professor Lance Twomey, I was hired on the spot.”

Ms Hodgkins’ programs, which spun out from Curtin under the Advantage Foundation banner in 2006, are based on experiential learning – a methodology that is underpinned by doing rather than listening. She said this type of learning is crucial, particularly for Generation Y and Z, who learn via interaction.

“Everything is going towards interactive, usually by some sort of social media or computer access, but our education system isn’t.

“Most importantly, I believe that it’s difficult to decide what career you want to be in if you don’t have any experience.”

Ms Hodgkins decided the best way to address this was through a reality TV-style project that would connect to the interactive nature of the younger generations.

The Business Icon competition, now run in WA, Victoria and Queensland, has won the support of local business leaders Rick Hart and Richard Goyder who sit on the judges’ table.

“Over 10 days participants complete four carefully designed business and social tasks which require them to think outside the box. Their actions solve real business challenges under the watchful eye of high profile judges.”

Ms Hodgkins also heads up the Australian Experiential Learning Centre, which is a direct result of her own frustrating experience at school and then later at university. AELC is the major underwriter of the Advantage Foundation’s activities.

“I’m actually a really bright person and yet I failed miserably at school because the teachers weren’t teaching in a way that I could learn from, so I got bored easily,” she said.

It made sense then to develop internship programs, which Ms Hodgkins said are an important step in obtaining experience and act as a “try before you buy” for the intern and the company.

AELC include workplace etiquette for their new interns so they understand how to interact and communicate with people on a professional level.

Ms Hodgkins has since branched out from Perth and has been running the award winning programs and internships around the country. She said the majority of AELC’s clients are now located in the eastern states.

“Here [WA] we tend to be very focused on mining and that’s it; there is more [variety] over east and the universities recognise that what AELC is doing is ahead of the pack.”

With a “first Australia, next the world” attitude, Ms Hodgkins said she is frequently approached by people who want to buy into the company. But she’s not quite willing to give over that control yet.

“We were going to be a high growth business from the start, we went out with that vision in mind.

“But when you’re looking at funding, you don’t want to bring in people who are just looking to make a profit, you want them to be interested in your business.”