Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemPost-world war II development of commercial courses for girls in Victorian technical schools, with special reference to the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, 1945-1970( 1974)In the inter-war years (1919- 1939), commercial courses, traditionally part of the technical system of education and fast becoming the province of girls, suffered from the effects of the economic depression, made some slight gains during the recovery years and achieved importance in the war years. In the post-World War II years growing community interest in education in general, and technical education in particular, reflected the social and economic climate of the rapidly changing 1950s and 1960s. High population growth and an affluent society created new educational needs, and industry required new technical college courses to meet technological developments and the continuing emergence of new knowledge. Occurring initially when Victorian resources were being channelled mainly into other priorities owing to post-war conditions, these demands caused a crisis in education in the late 1950s and in the 1960s, the Victorian Government being unable to support the expansion of tertiary education to its fullest extent. Therefore the Commonwealth Government granted, under certain conditions, financial aid to tertiary technical education and, in Victoria, the already existing Victoria Institute of Colleges became the guardian of the course standards of its affiliated C.A.E.s. Thus technical education at the tertiary level was eventually in a position to offer its own degrees and provide what promised to be a viable alternative to university education. The technical system of education appeared to represent a man's world and echoed the general education practice of the day as far as girls were concerned, thus reflecting the community's attitude to the place of women in Australian society. Tradition was the over-riding influence on what girls were taught and, as a necessary corollary, the kind of careers they followed. Hence it transpired that girls confined their abilities to a narrow range of female occupations, one of the chief of these being office work. The popularity of office work in the 1950s and 1960s was reflected in the growing number of students enrolling for commercial courses in the technical system. Technical commercial education responded increasingly to community and industrial demands, and endeavoured to maintain relevance to the changing times as it pursued higher standards and created a new concept of vocational training at both junior and senior levels. With the onset of the 1970s commercial education in the Victorian technical system provided all but one of the known commercial courses and, in keeping with the technical educational philosophy of the times, retained its established diploma. In the pursuit of professional status for the potential secretary, degree courses in secretarial work were foreshadowed in two Victorian C.A.E.s, while the Institute of Private Secretaries (Australia) sought professional status for the secretary already within the workforce.