A Perspective on Higher Education and Client Servicing in the Vanstone Era

The changes to higher education policy in Australia announced by Senator Amanda Vanstone in August 1996 have significantly altered the environment in which university career services operate. The increased emphasis on competition between institutions, in the context of the requirement that institutions generate more of their own income, has differential effects on different kinds of universities. The older “sandstone” universities and the larger universities of technology have seen their competitive position improve, while the situation facing other universities is becoming more difficult. The new environment has also placed pressure on careers advisers to generate better labour market information for students and to recover a growing proportion of their own costs.