Industry Consultation
It is required, so it gets produced. Produced as a record it changes nothing, and the difference between the two is visible to anybody who reads the file.
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It is required, so it gets produced. Produced as a record it changes nothing, and the difference between the two is visible to anybody who reads the file.
Almost every education and training framework requires providers to consult industry, and almost every provider can produce evidence that they did. There are attendance lists, letters of support, survey summaries and minutes of advisory meetings. The evidence is genuine in the sense that the events occurred. What is frequently absent is any sign that the consultation changed anything, and that absence is what distinguishes a compliance artefact from a design input.
The mechanism by which it becomes an artefact is understandable. The requirement is expressed as an obligation to consult, the assessment of it examines whether consultation occurred, and the cheapest way to satisfy an obligation to do something is to do the smallest version of it that generates a record. A meeting is held, attendance is captured, and the minutes note that the course was discussed and supported. Every element of the requirement has been met and nothing has been learned.
Industry Consultation is about engagement between education providers and the employers who hire their graduates: who to ask, what to ask, how to run advisory arrangements that produce something, and how to close the loop so that participation continues.
The editorial position is that consultation which produces no disagreement did not really happen, that the most valuable participants are the ones nobody contacts, and that consultation fatigue is a rational response to being asked repeatedly and never told what followed.
This publication is independent. It is not affiliated with any provider, industry association, regulator or consultancy, it does not accept payment for coverage, and it does not conduct consultation on anybody's behalf.