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| McMillan College, 1997. |
Through the convergence of several influences, the provision of agricultural education in Gippsland became an issue of political importance in the early 1970s.
Gippsland farmers, and dairy farmers in particular, had developed a keen interest in improving management skills. Discussion groups coordinated by the Department of Agriculture had whetted the appetite of many leading farmers for improved access to technical information and improved farm business management practices. The influence of highly respected Departmental advisors, including Frank Drake at Bairnsdale, Ian Norman at Maffra, Jack Hosking and Harry Edgoose at Warragul, Don Bissett at Leongatha, and Jack Green with a State-wide remit, had created a demand for both individual and group access to information through years of active extension work. The Department was increasingly hard pressed to meet the demand for advice and group activities. In addition, the success of the privately-endowed agricultural college, Marcus Oldham, and of the Department's own Glenormiston in delivering farm management courses had established the relevance and importance of such programs for both future and current farm managers.
In the other three regions of the State Department of Agriculture services included not only research and extension, but also education and training. In the south-west there was Glenormiston Agricultural College (refer to Chapter 9), in the north-west Longerenong (refer to Chapter 4), and in the north-east Dookie (refer to Chapter 3). Under these circumstances, it is perhaps not surprising that strong pressure began to be exerted by farmer groups and local government for the establishment of an agricultural college in Gippsland. Influential producers, including Rosemary Hug, Perc Blandford and Col Murray from East Gippsland and Bill Pyle, Ian Armour, Gil Silby and Tony Landy from West and South Gippsland, were active both individually and collectively (through farmer organisations and local government), aiming to establish a College in the region. Local government support from several Shires ensured that not only would the State Government feel the pressure for such a move, but also that that the parliamentarians would have to face the problem of choice of location if a College was to be established.
The Shire of Warragul appointed an Investigating Committee on Farm Management Training to prepare a submission for presentation to the Minister of Agriculture, Ian Smith. The Committee, chaired by Bill Pyle, carefully analysed the needs of the farming community and recommended an innovative approach very different from that of the existing agricultural colleges. Access for adults who were already farmers was a key recommendation, together with the provision of courses which suited farmer needs in content, presentation and timing. Other groups also presented recommendations on how access to agricultural education and training in the region might be improved.
Founding FathersThe Shire of Warragul in November 1993 presented to the Minister a series of recommendations for the establishment of a farm management training centre based in Warragul. Bill Pyle, a prominent dairy farmer and later President of the United Dairyfarmers of Victoria, had powerful support from other members of the farming community in preparing his recommendations. Kevin and Chas Dale of Drouin, Max Cameron of Nilma, Gil Silbey of Darnum, Michael Power of Warragul and John Morgan of Tetoora Road (all dairyfarmers), Tom O'Connor, a beef producer of Warragul and Andy Dennis, a teacher of agriculture at Warragul Technical School comprised the Committee. Warragul District Centre Department of Agriculture staff helped them. The Committee defined the objectives of a training centre as:
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The Committee listed the types of post-school education which should be offered, including a range of types of agricultural production, management skills including general economics, farm management economics and agricultural economics, marketing, agricultural and mercantile law, management philosophies, human relationships, and environmental issues. The members also advocated flexibility in delivery as a keynote issue. They envisaged an apprenticeship or cadetship approach, and said that a training centre should provide courses not only for farmers, but also for those who provide services to farmers and to non-farming people, including Gippsland industries. The Committee said that the Department of Agriculture should administer the training centre, but that it should have a Board of Directors which would be responsible for staff selection and to identify local needs for programs. An important issue was the advice that the farm management training centre should not have its own farm; however, it should have full residential facilities for men and women.
In January 1975 the Minister, after considering the recommendations, appointed an Interim Advisory Committee for an Agricultural College in Gippsland (refer to box: Interim Advisory Committee), chaired by Barrie Bardsley, then Assistant Chief of the Division of Extension Services in the State Department of Agriculture. This Committee was asked to investigate and make recommendations on:
It should be noted that the Minister had already decided on a location for the College, removing what could have been a potentially difficult question for the Interim Committee to deal with. The problems which would have been associated with a college linked closely to either East or West Gippsland were to a large extent overcome by the Interim Committee's recommendation on the structure of the new college.
Apart from an unwillingness to provide a Council with the responsibilities the Interim Committee had sought, particularly with reference to staffing, the Minister acted promptly and positively on these recommendations.
The title McMillan Rural Studies Centre was not chosen lightly. Angus McMillan was an early explorer in the Region, and the use of his name was an attempt to avoid the parochialism which might have been associated with the use of the name of a locality. A 'Rural Studies Centre' was considered to be less forbidding than a 'College' for practising farmers, who were expected to be the principal participants in the Centre's programs.
Interim Advisory CommitteeThe Interim Advisory Committee comprised 18 members from the entire Gippsland Region. There were nine producers (including Bill Pyle as Vice-Chairman), two representatives from the Technical School system, a representative of higher education from the Gippsland Institute, a representative of service industries, a representative of local government and four representatives from the Department of Agriculture. The Committee was appointed by the Minister in January and reported in July. Amongst other things, it recommended that:
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By November 1976 Brian Clarke had been appointed as the foundation Principal of McMillan. Teaching staff were in place shortly thereafter, and support staff at Warragul by mid-1977 Four centres were established at Bairnsdale, Maffra, Leongatha and Warragul, with Warragul providing the headquarters for the Centre. The first courses were offered in May 1977. The first year of operation saw nearly nine hundred people attending courses - the fact that the total number of student days of teaching was around 1,300 demonstrates the emphasis on short courses, in line with the charter of the College. The first Annual Report by Clarke at the end of 1977 makes a plea for additional resources; a not uncommon request in the annals of most organisations, but one perhaps more justified in the early days of establishment of this pioneering venture.
McMillan was and in 1997 to a large extent remains clearly different from other agricultural colleges in the nation in its approach to education and training. It began as a multi-campus operation, operating initially from Department of Agriculture offices except at Warragul where a shopfront centre was established. Following the purchase of land in Warragul and negotiations for locations at the other centres, planning began for the construction of college buildings. Grants for these major works came through the State TAFE system. Even in the building program, the emphasis was different from that at other agricultural colleges - the Public Works Department designed the buildings specifically for adult learning. The PWD later received an award for excellence for the McMillan complex. In 1982, the college moved to its own purpose-built centres.
In several important ways McMillan's activities have been both innovative and something of a thorn in the side of the bureaucracies surrounding education and training. In an early address Brian Clarke re-emphasised the two basic rules for the operation of McMillan - 'education has to be relevant, and it has to be available'. McMillan's emphasis on meeting the needs of practising farmers rather than a youthful student body, and on access, both changed the nature of courses and made demands on staff different from those associated with existing institutions:
The innovative charter and direction of McMillan in providing opportunities for the rural community to pursue adult learning in a flexible manner did not fit existing educational models at the time. As a result, there were both real and potential problems with the organisations which McMillan had to deal with.
First there was the fact that the new college had a remit which overlapped with the activities and responsibilities of Departmental extension staff. This was much more the case with McMillan than with any of the other colleges, because extension staff too saw their prime audience as practising farmers. The fact that over time there came to be a synergistic relationship between the two sections of the Department is a tribute to the management of the new entity and the capacity of the staff of both groups.
Second, there was an overlap between McMillan's objectives and those of what became the Technical and Further Education (TAFE) sector. This was particularly an issue with the establishment of the East Gippsland Community College of TAFE, some time after McMillan, whose remit was extremely broad and included agricultural training programs. This proved to be a much more serious issue than any internal Department of Agriculture conflict, and is discussed later.
Third, there was a problem with the nature of courses. Accrediting bodies were uncomfortable with courses which were so flexible, being much more accustomed to pre-defined content and yearly enrolment. Whilst McMillan remained part of the Department of Agriculture it was to some extent protected from the pressure for formalising courses, since that Department had extensive experience in continuing education through its extension services, and in particular in the delivery of short courses. Although the separation of the Colleges from the Department, through the formation in 1983 of the Victorian College of Agriculture and Horticulture (refer to Chapter 11) provided many advantages, by bringing agricultural education into mainstream education, it also presented some problems, of which loss of flexibility was to become one of the most important. As the VCAH became more closely integrated into the wider TAFE sector, the conflicts associated with flexibility and a broadly-defined rather than a specific curriculum, led to challenges in adjustment for the management of McMillan and for the VCAH generally.
Fourth, and in some ways most importantly, McMillan and VCAH short courses generally came from a Department of Agriculture rather than a State Department of Education or TAFE administrative background. McMillan, and the VCAH at first applied a course fee structure which did not match the practices in other parts of the TAFE system, charging fees on the basis of what the proposed participants might be able to afford and looking toward only partial cost recovery. This proved to be an unacceptable approach once the VCAH began to provide accredited courses, which had a carefully-defined and legislated fee structure. Courses had to be either accredited and fully funded by the State, or else unaccredited and based on full cost recovery. It was clear that if farmer short courses were to be delivered on a full cost recovery basis, they would be too expensive to attract high levels of participation. Consequently, the decision was made to move toward accreditation of these courses. This had some benefits, because farmers could now undertake short courses under an umbrella structure which allowed them to work toward qualification, because there was a degree of quality control across the entire TAFE system, and because there could be national acceptance of qualifications. However, with these benefits came a degree of inflexibility difficult to reconcile with the objectives which McMillan brought to the field of agricultural education and training at its inception. Recent moves to allow 'customisation' of courses to meet local needs go some way to overcoming this problem.
The VCAH generally has faced one further problem in its relationship with TAFE, one consequence of which has had an impact on McMillan's development. This is the problem of lack of access to capital works funds. TAFE management has held that since the relationship between the VCAH and the Minister of Education is different from that between the TAFE colleges and the Minister, the TAFE system has less control over the VCAH's capital assets than over those of the TAFE colleges. The VCAH therefore has not been permitted to be part of the major capital works programs conducted in TAFE over the last few years. The impact on McMillan has been a delay to the establishment of the residential facilities foreseen by the earliest advice provided on the new college's operation. Eventually, new residential facilities were provided and opened in 1996, through a combination of internal funding and philanthropic gifts, particularly from the Andrews Foundation.
Problems notwithstanding, McMillan's profile and enrolment continued to rise. In 1996, the college provided educational and training programs for some 3,500 people in around one hundred courses at fifty locations. The college has been faithful to the vision of those who established it, with a solid core of farm management programs for a wide range of industries and for participants with a wide range of levels of experience, from beginner to specialist.
From the earliest days, McMillan has placed great emphasis on the crucial role of women in agriculture. Brian Clarke convened a conference in 1979 entitled 'The Women of Country Australia Look Ahead'. This proved to be the first meeting of what later became Women in Agriculture Inc. Course delivery has consistently encouraged the attendance of both men and women by providing discounted fees for the second partner to enrol. Special courses for women on farm skills have been very popular. Women members of staff and part-time or contract women teachers have been an important part of the McMillan approach.
In 1986, the campus strengthened its emphasis on distance education by providing additional expertise in the design and use of distance education techniques. The importance of distance education to the campus and to the VCAH in general was felt to merit such a development. At McMillan, the proportion of enrolments and student contact hours made up from people studying in the distance mode has risen steadily until it is now over 40 percent of the total delivery of the campus.
There were two important events in 1987 which expanded McMillan's scope of activities - the campus's involvement in Farming Trades Apprenticeship courses and in the final stages of the Bachelor of Applied Science (Agriculture) course.
Farming Trades Apprenticeships had not previously been delivered by either the Department of Agriculture or the VCAH. The TAFE system regarded the Department as being antagonistic to the course, since during its development Departmental representatives on the working party had expressed concerns about quality of teaching within the Technical School system which at that time was responsible for apprenticeship programs. When TAFE was removed from schools in the mid-1980s, agricultural and horticultural apprenticeships moved to the TAFE Colleges along with other apprenticeship programs.
During 1986 a case was made by the Principal of the time, Barrie Bardsley, to the Regional Committee in Gippsland that the logical place to deliver, for example, farming trades apprenticeship courses was McMillan, just as the logical place to deliver electrical apprenticeship programs was the Yallourn College of TAFE. The Regional Committee did not accept this point of view, but the Director of TAFE at the time, Ian Predl, was convinced and McMillan took on farming trades apprenticeship courses from 1987, in partnership with Yallourn COT, which provided specialist skills such as welding and motor mechanics. The picture was somewhat different in the eastern end of McMillan's operations, however, where the East Gippsland Community College of TAFE provided the Farming Trades Apprenticeship course. This difference in delivery was to have an impact on later decisions about management of the sub-campuses of the College.
McMillan's delivery of the Farming Trades Apprenticeship course exacerbated problems which had begun to emerge at Leongatha, where the sub-campus was on land under the control of the Leongatha Technical School. There was some competition for teaching resources in the trades portions of the program, and the Principal of the Technical College at the time, Irving Stephens, made it clear that the needs of his students came first. He denied access to the cafeteria facilities at the Technical School for the Farming Trades Apprentices, and relationships became strained. Meetings convened by senior staff of the Department of Education failed to resolve access problems for some time. As at Gilbert Chandler College, competition for scarce resources between two growing institutions sharing the same location proved to be a recipe for friction, and to require constant arbitration by senior management of the two organisations involved.
Other campuses of the VCAH also began to deliver farming trades apprenticeship courses, and today the Institute of Melbourne School of Land and Environment is one of the State's biggest providers. Bob Gray, who took over as Principal in 1987, had the task of integrating the apprenticeship program into the profile of the campus.
The advent of the farming trades' apprenticeship brought in staff with differing expertise, either seconded from or re-employed from the TAFE sector in many cases. It also brought the VCAH more into contact with the TAFE sector, and its accountability more into line with that sector. Although this may have been seen in the first instance as a handicap, the marked expansion of McMillan's and the VCAH's delivery in agricultural education and training could not have been achieved without the support of the TAFE sector, since there has been little scope for expansion in higher education courses. TAFE delivery is now an integral, and integrated, part of Land and Food's suite of offerings.
The other 1987 development, involvement with the Bachelor of Applied Science (Agriculture) course, had a smaller but still marked impact on McMillan. Students in the final year of their degree course, which commenced at Dookie, could elect to complete a major study at another campus where expertise available suggested that this would be to their advantage. Staff at McMillan thus had the chance to be involved in course development for a degree-level program, and to support the work of students in research and course work. One outcome of the degree course that was hoped for was a closer integration of staff and programs of the VCAH across all campuses, and to an extent this has been realised. Land and Food's new structure is expected to further develop this cooperation and coordination.
McMillan staff have played a major role in several other programs. Two such are the Farm Chemical Users Course, which provides chemical users with the knowledge and skills necessary to enable them to be licensed to purchase and use agricultural chemicals, and the Certificate of Rural Office Practice, a program which introduces the principles of farm secretarial work and farm financial control. In the Farm Chemical Users Course, McMillan has developed the State-wide support system for the delivery of the Course, and 22,000 people have undertaken the course since 1989. The campus has also expanded its scope of operations to include amenity horticulture courses. It has links with other countries through its distance education delivery and through delivery of programs in Taiwan, and is currently investigating provision in China.
In 1993 McMillan became the home for the National Milk Harvesting Training Centre. This Centre provides training and consultancy programs for the industry, and in association with the State Department of Natural Resources and Energy's Ellinbank Dairy Research Institute, provides an important service at the critical stage where milk must be removed from the cow in such a way as to provide the best possible quality for the next stages of processing.
McMillan's role in rural industries has enabled it to make a major contribution to the organisation and conduct of several important events. The announcement of the Government's intention to form what was to become the VCAH was made by the Minister for Education, Tom Austin, at the opening of the buildings in 1982. In 1985 the campus helped to organise the dairy industry conference 'The Challenge: Efficient Dairy Production' (a joint Australian Society of Animal Production and New Zealand Society of Animal Production conference), which was conducted in Albury. In 1986 the campus hosted an Agricultural Education Conference, with representatives from New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States as well as all States of Australia. The Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, launched the policy paper on Rural and Regional Australia at the Warragul campus in December 1989. The Principal, Bob Gray, played a major role when the campus hosted the Australian Potato Conference in June 1990 with an attendance of over four hundred.
McMillan, a relatively small campus serving the rural industries in a region where there were two TAFE colleges with broad profiles, continued to be under pressure for its very existence. The TAFE system undertook a number of reviews of TAFE delivery in Gippsland. The first was that conducted by Graham Beanland, former Director of the Newport College of TAFE. The results of this review were never disclosed to McMillan's management, or to the VCAH generally. Later, Fran Thorn and John Hird from the Office of the State Training Board undertook a further review, which recommended that the East Gippsland Community College of TAFE should take over from McMillan the delivery of agricultural programs at that end of the region. Yallourn College of TAFE raised the question as to whether it should be the provider for West and South Gippsland at around this time. Although neither of these outcomes immediately came to pass, they did leave issues unresolved in the region, and opened the way for further reviews. Not surprisingly, they left a sense of uncertainty in the minds of McMillan's staff.
In 1991 McMillan, along with Longerenong, became the focus of attention of the Selway Review. Michael Selway was commissioned by the State Training Board to review the TAFE provision of agricultural education, and delivered a comprehensive report which supported the affiliation of the VCAH with the University of Melbourne. He also agreed with a University proposition to establish an over-arching Institute of Agricultural Education to ensure coordination and cooperation across the State. Selway made the comment that:
'It should be noted that I do not support a proposal which divides Agricultural Education and Training in the region between two autonomous TAFE colleges of West and East Gippsland.'
By now, however, the bureaucratic tensions referred to earlier had come to a head, particularly in East Gippsland where the Community College of TAFE had been established with a small population to serve and an overlapping profile with McMillan. Following the Selway Review and a later report from Peter Hill of the Ministry of Education, the Minister decided to excise the Bairnsdale and Sale campuses of McMillan and annexe them to the East Gippsland CCOT. This decision, which could be seen as contrary to the outcome envisaged by Selway, was welcomed by the Council of the East Gippsland Community College of TAFE. However, the protestations made by some representatives of the farming community that such a move would lead to the downgrading of delivery of agricultural education and training in East Gippsland have been seen by many to be well-founded. They would have been even more accurate had not arrangements been made for McMillan to deliver agricultural and related programs in East Gippsland, and to retain a presence in Sale, neither of which were supported by the reviews which led to the changes.
Today, McMillan faces another watershed. New residential facilities, opened in 1996, provide further flexibility for people to attend courses. Installation of new technology to provide for video-lecturing, and connection to the Internet, open up opportunities for the College. The new relationships and synergies which can arise from McMillan's role as part of the Institute of Melbourne School of Land and Environment also mean that the College can broaden its scope of operations.
But there are some major challenges to face. Continuing demands for productivity increase have put staff members under great pressure, arguably greater than those which would affect a larger campus with a greater proportion of longer courses. The overwhelming emphasis on TAFE courses at McMillan means that there was, in the minds of legislators and senior managers in the TAFE system, a question as to the appropriate management structure for the College - would it be better to annexe it to a TAFE College? With the commitment by the University of Melbourne to a major role in TAFE for agricultural education, perhaps this question has now been put to rest.
The final outcome of these tensions will be greatly influenced by the way in which this expressed commitment is put into practice in the management of the Faculty and of McMillan, and by the capacity of the campus itself to further develop its own specialist niche in agricultural education and training.
The affiliation of the VCAH with the University of Melbourne brought with it the first involvement of the University in the delivery of TAFE programs. In view of the lack of sympathy for the competency-based approach to education and training which underpins TAFE accreditation expressed by most universities in Australia. The embracing of TAFE in this sector by the University of Melbourne is a major advance.
As the College with the highest proportion of TAFE courses, McMillan is a central part of the operation of the Institute of Melbourne School of Land and Environment. The College provides a major focus in TAFE for innovation and adaptation. It maintains a strong commitment both to TAFE programs and to the industries these programs serve, thus helping to ensure that a strong focus on agricultural education and training continues in the Region, as well as nationally and internationally. McMillan's role therefore is complementary to that of the other campuses of Land and Food.
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| McMillan College, 1997. |
