24 June 2014
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Government subsidised diploma enrolments have crashed in Victoria’s open training market, according to the government’s latest quarterly report.
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The report shows enrolments in government-supported diploma and advanced diploma courses fell by 26,400 or 28% last year.
This means two-thirds of the growth in upper level qualifications since the government opened up access to its training funds — from 55,700 enrolments in 2008 to 94,800 in 2012 — has been erased in a single year.
According to The Australian, some students appear to have settled for paying commercial rates, with the number of full-fee diploma enrolments at TAFE rising 7% last year. This contrasts with full-fee TAFE enrolments in vocational certificates, which declined by 7% last year.
The figures suggest Victoria’s market-oriented skills reforms have failed in one of their key objectives — to increase uptake of high level qualifications.
Victorian Skills Minister Nick Wakeling said the government has increased overall skills funding by over 50% since it took office in 2010 and that overall subsidised enrolments had increased by more than half since then, from 426,900 in 2010 to 645,000 last year.
However the report shows total enrolments declined by 4% last year compared with 2012.