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“How does going to TAFE compare to studying at a university? Are there any major differences in what I can expect from the campus experience or study routines? Oh, and what about commuting? Which of the two is best for me???”
As somebody who jumped into a university course straight out of highschool (partly because I didn’t have much of anything going on at the time, partly because my highschool teachers were vehement about the idea that further study was necessary to be “successful”, partly because the subjects I was interested in were only taught at uni, and partly because UAC practically coerces indecisive highschool students into making a decision) and only enrolled in a TAFE course later on in life, I have noticed that there are numerous differences between the student experience at TAFE at at university, and there are pros and cons for each type of institution.
My attempts to compare the two are included in the table below, which covers the following aspects (listed sequentially rather than as dot points to save space):
*Campus vibe, *Building and campus design, *Commuting and parking, *Teaching staff, *Staff Directory for contacting teachers, *Class style, *Learning management system, *Library catalogue, *Library facilities, *Campus bookstore, *On-campus jobs, *Academic transcripts, *Onsite childcare, *Wifi
It’s also probably worth mentioning that TAFE libraries house many books and other resources that chronicle TAFE’s history https://tafecat.tafensw.edu.au/client/en_AU/tafensw/search/results?qu=tafe+history&isd=true
| Aspect | TAFE | University | Possible Explanation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campus vibe (outside of classes) ✨😎 | TAFE feels very underpopulated and kinda dead 🥱 😴 most of the time, to be blunt. | ||
| That’s probably due to most classes taking place at the same time, each of which is a full school day or 6 hrs (9am to 3pm). |
TAFE (at least nowadays) also lacks student societies, and the 9am-3pm class sessions prevent roaming the campus or mingling with other students.
There are some signs of life; students visit to canteens during morning tea or lunch, but it’s much less than what one would see at a university. Even the libraries are typically underpopulated.
As for events and festivities, TAFE doesn’t seem to have many events other than during open days or orientation. | Lively, busy, so many campus events and incursions 🤩 🙌 🎉
Universities often have student societies that showcase performances or hold stalls on campus, wh | Classes at TAFE last for the whole day (9am - 3pm or so, just like school) and are a mixture of different activities. Breaks, which depend on the teachers’ discretion, are usually short (15-30 min), which do not provide much time to roam or explore the campus.
Classes at uni are delivered in short bursts, usually 1-2 hours for lectures and 2-4 hours for hands-on sessions like tutorials and practicals.
Universities have Student Services and Amenities Fees (SSAF), which is a portion of tuition that goes towards campus activities such as clubs or other events. TAFE lacks an equivalent fund, so there isn’t a budget to make the campus more lively and vibrant (and the lack of free time between classes means that there would be minimal opportunity to enjoy any events that do happen to be held) | | Buildings and campus design 🏢 | Unsure if this is the case for all TAFE campuses but the buildings and how the spaces are laid out really feel like they were former schools and school grounds that TAFE happened to acquire over the years. I say this because there are sports fields and wide open spaces and stainless steel seating and canteens and whatever that don’t suit TAFE’s barren vibe/low student population, and only make sense with the population and activity of a primary school or highschool.
Some TAFE buildings are purpose built and are clearly more recent developments compared to the rest of the campus. | University buildings are often a mix of old, grandiose buildings made of sandstone and the like (like USYD), inherited spaces that have been refurbished (WSU Parramatta and the female orphan school or mental asylum, for instance), and entirely new developments (UTS’s mosaic of fancy architecture that is slapped in the middle of the city).
The campuses of universities are often purposely designed for a dynamic student population, and emphasise walkability between different buildings/departments while allowing for student clubs or other organisations to host events and activities onsite. | | | Commuting and parking 🚗🚙 | Parking is FREE at TAFE!
In my experience, parking has also usually been easy to find (plenty of spare spots) from one day to another. | Parking is NOT free at uni, and is just one of many revenue streams. Students (maybe staff too idk) can usually opt to purchase a day ticket (e.g., $9 per day), a semester-long parking pass (e.g., $120 per semester of 14 weeks), or a year-long parking pass (e.g., $200 for 28 weeks).
Despite having to pay for parking at uni, the lots are much more packed and it’s often tough to find a place to park. | Parking is not free at uni because universities are money-greedy corporations lol.
Other than parking infrastructure, universities also invest into other assets such as real estate (WSU has a stake in Sydney Zoo in Eastern Creek and maybe Caddens Corner shopping centre near Kingswood)
I’ve no idea how parking is made free at TAFE, but am very thankful that it is. | | Teaching staff 👩🏫 | *(per course) A few generalists with industry experience
*One instructor may often teach multiple units throughout the course even if they come from different specialities
*Qualifications: Certificate IV Training and Assessment minimum | *(per course) Multiple specialists with research and/industry experience
*One instructor typically teaches within their speciality
*Qualifications: Postgrad minimum (Masters and/or PhD) for lecturers, Bachelors minimum for tutors and auxiliary teaching staff | Idk, if people have the patience to make it through grueling PhD and postdoctorate positions at uni, they’d probably be more discerning in terms of the prestige and payment of work opportunities that they would pursue, and would definitely be more familiar with university admin.
Additionally, teaching at uni (sessional academic work) is often how postgrad candidates earn money without having to work off campus, which gives a predisposition to working in a university classroom/lecture/lab environment. | | Staff Directory for contacting teachers 🗃️ | The TAFE website doesn’t seem to have a staff directory. Contact details for teachers are provided in the TAFE Digital Centre/online learning portal, but those are only accessible by enrolled students. In other words, teachers can generally only be contacted by their own students and maybe by staff within their own department or admin support, rather than by members of the public or other departments.
Some pages on the TAFE website have a ‘meet our teachers’ feature, but it’s largely for PR/marketing and does NOT provide useful contact details https://careers.tafensw.edu.au/meet-our-people, https://www.tafensw.edu.au/international/study/teachers
There is a kind of staff directory on the external platform ‘Zoom info’ https://www.zoominfo.com/pic/tafe-nsw/85101078, but it’s all locked behind a paywall | All universities maintain staff directories on their websites, and such directories are typically accessible by members of the public or anyone else that may be interested (e.g., industry professionals, students of other institutions). Seems like these directories are separated by faculty/department/school. I’ll include some examples of university staff directories below:
WSU Science faculty https://directory.westernsydney.edu.au/schools/SCHSCI/staff
UTS Business faculty https://profiles.uts.edu.au/groups/16/experts UTS Higher education language and presentation support (HELPS) https://www.uts.edu.au/for-students/current-students/support/helps/higher-education-language-and-presentation-support
UNSW Medicine faculty https://www.unsw.edu.au/medicine-health/about-us/our-faculty/our-academics
USYD Architecture faculty https://www.sydney.edu.au/architecture/about/our-people.html | It makes sense for universities to encourage contact with their staff members for research collaboration or outreach or other efforts, since these efforts often result in publications or other research & development output.
| | Class style 🧮 | Probably varies from one course to another, but TAFE seems to have a general class time (6hrs with 1 or 2 breaks like recess and lunch) where anything could happen - such as lecture style deliveries, class discussions, roleplay assessments, computer work, whatever else - rather than different types of classes.
| Classes typically come in a handful of distinct varieties: *Lectures (1-3hrs) - one way deliveries of information from one lecturer to many students; may include some quizzes and interactive components but they would be in the minority *Tutorials (1-2hrs) - more interactive classes where a series of practice exercises on worksheets or computers are worked through by a tutor and a smaller group of students (maybe up to ~20) *Practicals (2-4hrs) - hands-on sessions where specialty equipment used by members of the discipline/profession are handled to perform particular tasks or experiments
Other specialised class types exist and vary from one course to another *Simulation labs (e.g., for Nursing where students practice procedures on training dummies in rooms with hospital beds and equipment) *Seminars | I know that TAFE classes are scheduled to match school terms (4 in a year), whereas universities operate on two semesters in a year (or Trimesters in the case of UNSW). | | Learning Management System ⚙️(LMS)/Platform (the IT system used to manage coursework and materials and assessments | From what I’m aware of, TAFE utilises several different platforms to conduct their courses
*TAFE Digital Center (aka TDC) - this is where online quiz assessments are undertaken and document assessments are submitted, but it has no videoconferencing ability and poor file management ability (teachers can’t readily upload or update stuff on the TDC) so it’s practically useless for anything other than formal assessment submission.
*Microsoft Teams - for file management, forum-style correspondence, videoconferencing. MS Teams seems to be an enterprise standard for collaboration, so it’s pretty good that TAFE uses it to deliver classes that aim to bring students to a workplace level of competence.
*Moodle - unsure exactly how Moodle works but it is linked from the TAFE TDC. Moodle delivers TAFE workbooks in a format that resembles a webpage (with page navigation, interactable elements, etc.) but is worse than the original word doc format of a workbook for the following reasons: **cannot scroll through the entire workbook without having to complete interactables → cannot locate information or keywords with Ctrl + F, **cannot annotate or take notes **cannot access without an internet connection **cannot print or view in printable format | From my time as a uni student and cursory interactions with students from other university, each uni uses slightly different Learning Management Systems
WSU: vUWS (virtual University of Western Sydney)
Others: Canvas, Moodle, Maple TA | I really don’t know much about why different institutions utilise different learning management systems other than having different budgets and strategic directions or policies. | | Course and subject admin | TAFE is a massive pain in this regard, particularly for prospective students who are choosing their courses.
The websites that prospective students visit to scope out potential courses is https://www.tafensw.edu.au/course-areas, and focuses on details such as weekly wages, % full time job share, % of women employed, etc. Little emphasis is placed on course and subject administrative details - one cannot even find out who the course teachers are, where the classes are, what learning outcomes are involved for each of the subjects, or what textbooks and info resources are recommended.
Instead of providing subject descriptions on their own website, students and teachers need to check Training.gov (national training database) for the details of each course and unit. At no point in my time as a student in the Certificate IV and Diploma of Library Services courses was Training.gov mentioned to me, and I only found out about it when searching for subject codes (e.g., BSBINS404 etc.) on google. | Courses and subjects are typically described on a university’s online handbook. These include details such as names + codes, semester schedules, possible career pathways, relevant staff, etc.
Subject descriptions often include details such as the schedule of classes (what kinds of classes occur and where they are delivered), descriptions of subjects, contact info of the subject coordinator staff, and often a list of references or recommended textbooks/reading material.
Additionally, each subject or unit is documented by a Learning Guide (this is the terminology that WSU uses; other unis may use different terms), which comprehensively describes the scheduling of classes (lectures, tutorials, practicals, seminars, field trips, etc.), assessments, exams. Learning Guides are super helpful since they include details on topics week-by-week, the prescribed readings/textbooks for the unit, the instructions for each assessment, and a bunch more forms of useful information (it’s a feature of uni that I miss nowadays since TAFE does not provide learning guides for their Certificate or Diploma level units… maybe it’s different for Degree level courses, but idk…)
| | | Library Catalogue (see pictures below the table) 🗃️ | TAFE NSW’s library catalogue (TAFECat) is provided by Sirsidynix (the exact ILMS is probably Symphony, a product by Sirsidynix).
Its functionality is okay, allowing users to perform advanced searchers and see bibliographic info for items, but lacks critical aspects such as tables of contents for catalogued resources and the ability to export citations in various formats (the latter of which would be very helpful for assignments - just use a university catalogue for citations when doing TAFE assessments ¯\(ツ)/¯ )
A | From what I’ve seen, the universities in Sydney seem to utilise the Primo ILMS, provided by ex Libris.
Primo offers much more functionality to users and provides way more detailed bibliographic data than Symphony. Citation and bibliographic data can conveniently be exported in various formats (such as to EndNote, bibtex, or simply as text to be copied and pasted)
https://www.reddit.com/r/librarians/comments/a095nx/ex_libris_primo_what_are_the_mustknow_features/
*Devices can be borrowed
*Some campus require PCs to be booked before use but not all
*General works (fiction, junior nonfiction, picture books) are often stocked
*ILL requests need to be made in-person or maybe by emailing or calling (the ILMS doesn’t allow it) | *Printing is NOT free even for students and staff
*Devices can be borrowed
*PCs do not need to be booked (and they are everywhere around campus; not just in the library)
*General works are typically NOT stocked in order to accommodate specialty academic texts, journals, etc.. An exception to this may be on campuses where education is taught, which may stock books that are appropriate for primary and secondary schools.
*Idk about ILL requests at uni since it was never necessary for my studies | Universities typically allow students to roam throughout the entire campus while providing infrastructure (WifI over a wide area, computers and power sockets in random hallways and rooms) that enables computer access.
Universities also have to support researchers by purchasing and stocking expensive, esoteric texts. This, coupled with the high student populations, would prevent any free printing.
TAFE, however, centralises IT provision to the campus library (Wifi is rarely strong enough to cover the entire campus). Perhaps this makes it easier to provide free printing, but in exchange requires | | Campus Bookstore 📚 | VetRes (Vocational Education & Training Resources) seems to be TAFE’s equivalent to an organization bookstore, but from what I’m seeing most of the resources are published by TAFE specifically to support the courses on offer (other than the trade standards).
The product catalogue of VetRes is also very small, compared to any university bookshop back when they were commonplace. 262 items in total https://www.vetres.net.au/search.php?mode=search&page=1 and most of the stock is for Language, Literacy, and Numeracy/LLN. UPDATE: As of 6 April 2026 (and possibly earlier in the year) VetRes seems to be closed down now 😔 https://www.tafensw.edu.au/about/vetres
VetRes was described by ZoomInfo as follows : “About VETRes VETRes, a service by TAFE NSW, provided a range of vocational education and training resources including textbooks, workbooks, and assessment materials across various training packages. The resources catered to sectors such as agriculture, community services, construction, and health, among others. Although the service is now closed, it aimed to support students and educators in their learning and teaching endeavors. VETRes was designed for individuals seeking educational materials in vocational training contexts.” https://www.zoominfo.com/c/vetres/355728660
Also, certain units have workbooks that are produced and published by Aspire Learning Resources (based in Victoria), which cover a range of disciplines/training packages specified on Training.gov, including *AUR (<click AUR to see Aspire’s available worbooks, or see automotive retail on Training Gov) *BSB (see business services on Training Gov) *CHC (see community services on Training Gov) *ECEC (see early childhood education care on Training Gov), *FSK (see foundation skills on Training Gov), *HLT (see health on Training Gov), and *LLN (language, literacy, numeracy), along with other digital materials such as ebooks and online training courses (eLearning and Microcredentials, and Microlearning) | There used to be bookstores (Co-op bookshop?) on every university campus around Greater Sydney (WSU, USyd, UTS, UNSW, etc.), but those seem to have been rendered obsolete by the online fulfillment centre of Booktopia except for UNSW’s bookshop)
Click this sentence to go on a virtual tour of UNSW’s bookshop!
A Sydney Morning Herald article on the closure of the Co-op bookshops is linked as follows https://www.smh.com.au/national/co-op-bookshop-to-disappear-from-university-shelves-20200130-p53w68.html | Who knows why TAFE doesn’t have a bookstore…
Perhaps there used to be a company in the past that provided purchaseable textbooks and learner guides to students, but I can’t find any info about them. Perhaps they abruptly went out of business or ceased operation in the same way that VetRes did (still operating with a functional website in 2025, but closed down as of April 6 2026). | | On-campus jobs 👔💰 | Hard to say, TAFE seems generally underpopulated and the admin staff are typically huddled away in their own buildings, so it’s hard to tell if current students work at tafe in various roles.
That being said, TAFE does have its own job platform at https://careers.tafensw.edu.au/jobs/search
TAFE also grants access to Jobs connect https://jobsconnect.prosple.com/ but this platform is free to access outside of TAFE anyway. | Universities often have significant student workforces and dedicated platforms for students to find on-campus jobs (where entry-level positions seem to pay higher than similar jobs outside of uni).
WSU: https://careerhub.westernsydney.edu.au/ UTS: https://careerhub.uts.edu.au/ USYD: https://careerhub.sydney.edu.au/ UNSW: idk exactly, maybehttps://www.unsw.edu.au/employability/resources/jobs-on-campus or https://www.jobs.unsw.edu.au/ | Universities have plenty of money to spare; a positive side effect of this is being able to provide decently-paid entry-level opportunities to students to help kickstart careers and provide exposure to working in Australia, which is especially useful for international students due to their limit on working hours.P | | Academic transcripts | TAFE provides academic transcripts free-of-charge and only in print format. I think these are obtainable from each campus’s reception office, but it’s also possible to screenshot
Make sure to photocopy or scan you transcript to produce backups! | Each instance of accessing/downloading one’s official university academic transcript incurs a fee (i.e., pay to access your own grades, which is ridiculous) which is a few dozen dollars if I recall correctly.
At least the downloaded document is a secure PDF which has some authorization, but the file cannot be accessed or opened beyond a certain number of attempts or a certain timeframe (another ridiculous practice since you need to pay AGAIN
Other than that, a printed transcript is available after graduation (I think this one is provided free).
Maybe it’s possible to take a simple screenshot of one’s grades in the enrolment management platform (MySR back when I was a uni student) | | | Onsite childcare 👪 | I think some TAFE campuses have onsite childcare facilities. Kingswood and Mt Druitt do, and it seems that those are linked to the Early Childhood courses delivered on those campuses. | Some university campuses have onsite childcare.
To memory: WSU Kingswood WSU Parramatta | | | WiFi and wireless network coverage 🛜 | TAFE provides WiFi to all students (can access via their student ID and password) but from my experience the signal is strongest inside classrooms rather than outside them, which means that devices typically are unable to connect to the TAFE wifi network when students roam outdoors
There is no data limit to uploads or downloads, or at least none that I’ve noticed, and the same TAFE student account can be used to access wifi at any TAFE campus. There might be restrictions on which websites can be visited.
More info about TAFE WiFi services can be found on https://tafensw.libguides.com/wifisupport
To summarise: *Unlimited wifi for students *Some websites might be restricted *Limited campus coverage (indoors only) *Works on any TAFE Campus | Universities also provide WiFi to all students, and the wireless network is generally strong enough to cover the entire campus (not restricted to inside the buildings) which encourages students to roam around and study where they like.
If you combine broad wifi coverage with short bursts of class time (2 to 3 hours), you get students that have the ability to freely wander around, thus giving the impression of a vibrant, lively campus life.
Furthermore, students who are enrolled at one university can still access wifi at other university campuses (e.g., WSU student visiting USYD) via eduroam, a cross-institutional wifi provision service. The institutions that participate in eduroam are listed here: https://admin.eduroam.edu.au/participants/
To summarise: *Unlimited wifi for students *Website restriction unlikely *Wide campus coverage (indoors and outdoors) *Can use eduroam when visiting other uni campuses | |
(Brief) comparison of integrated library management systems (ILMS) between TAFE and university
[TAFECat OPAC/catalogue](https://tafecat.tafensw.edu.au/client/en_AU/tafensw/?) (Symphony or something, provided by the software company Sirsi Dynix)
^TAFECat listing for ‘Librarian’s guide to online searching’ (2nd edn)
Although several pieces of publication info and metadata are available, it lacks some features (such as table of contents, preview pages, user or staff reviews, etc.) that could help readers review and evaluate the usefulness or relevance of the titles for their purposes.
University OPAC/catalogue (Primo or Alma, by Ex Libris, https://exlibrisgroup.com/products/primo-discovery-service/ or https://exlibrisgroup.com/products/primo-discovery-service/content-index/)
^WSU Library listing for ‘Librarian’s guide to online searching’ (3rd edn)
The bibliographic record in the OPAC of WSU contains features that are missing from the TAFECat, such as: