__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ News __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ VET FEE-HELP skewering system 11 December 2015 | Explosive growth in the VET FEE-HELP scheme has masked massive direct public disinvestment in vocational education and training. While a report by NCVER shows a notional growth of 1.7% in 2014 over 2013 (plus $141.0 million, from $8512.4 million to $8653.4 million), it’s all in VET-FEE Help payments: actual direct expenditure by governments, … [Read more...]
Anatomy of a scandal
10/12/2015 by
How did the Australian VET system get here? LH Martin Institute | 8 December 2015 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… Jim Davidson, a former senior official of both the Victorian and Commonwealth governments and now a Senior Honorary Fellow of the LH Martin Institute, dissects the crisis now enveloping the VET sector. As he asks: How could this have happened? Good question. He says future policy responses by government need to deal with the root causes of the current growth in VET FEE-HELP and not further exacerbate the issues caused by the current policy settings. And he proposes that an immediate measure should be a moratorium on VET FEE-HELP loans for online course … [Read more...]
It just beggars belief
09/12/2015 by
9 December 2015 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… Fairfax Media reports on the $1 million cost to taxpayers of completed Human Resource Management Diplomas at the so-called Australian Institute of Professional Education (AIPE) - $111 million paid out in VET FEE-HELP in 2014 for just 117 completions. Meanwhile, The Oz reports that the Australian Competition an Consumer Commission is taking a third provider - Empower Institute - to court over allegations of "misleading or deceptive and unconscionable conduct" when marketing its courses to remote communities across the country (it will follow Unique International and Phoenix College to the Federal Court dock) - it enrolled 14,000 in … [Read more...]
Measures to rein in rorters
08/12/2015 by
Commonwealth | 3 December 2015 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… New rules to better protect students in the vocational education and training sector will come into effect from 1 January 2016 with the passage of the Higher Education Amendment (VET FEE-HELP Reform) Bill 2015.. …………………………………………………………………………………….......…… These changes include: that training providers must ensure they are not signing up students for a VET FEE-HELP at the same time as they are being enrolled in a course providers must assess the student’s capacity to undertake the course for which they are enrolling stronger safeguards for under 18 year old students so that they cannot be signed up for a … [Read more...]
ACPET dismayed, as well
08/12/2015 by
8 December 2015 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… ACPET's Rod Camm expresses dismay over the raft of changes in relation to VET FEE-HELP legislated last week -and fair enough, too, because the blameless will be collateral damage in cracking down on the utterly blameworthy rorters. But Camm also poses the question that has occurred to most VET sector participants and observers: how could this have been allowed to happen? He answers the question thus: Without....checks and balances this could only mean Government has been approving this phenomenal growth, in a relatively small number of public and private providers, … [Read more...]
Once was TAFE
08/12/2015 by
8 December 2015 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… There’s been a growing chorus of outrage over the looting of VET FEE-HELP by a handful of VET providers, coupled with disbelief that the government and regulatory agencies could have had such lax safeguards as to allow this to happen. It was all perfectly predictable. On 29 April 2012, The Scan published Once was TAFE, a commentary on the then Victorian government’s introduction of so-called “competitive neutrality” in the public funding of VET. It’s a piece that has stood the test of time. It does beggar belief that having been witness to the chaos that was occurring in the Victorian system courtesy of open access to funding and … [Read more...]
Phoenix crashes and burns
05/12/2015 by
Fairfax Media | 5 December 2015 ……………………………………………………………………………………………………… Melbourne's Phoenix Institute has shut down its “real world division” (that is, its face-to-face, classroom rather than online delivery) as a result of a federal government crackdown which has seen VET FEE-HELP funding to the entire sector frozen and legal action initiated by the ACCC. Some 260 transpersonal counselling and art therapy students are affected by the closure. …………………………………………………………………………………….......…… The funding freeze could prompt a number of multi-million dollar college collapses as the government belatedly clamps down on an out-of-control sector that will cost it $4 billion or more this … [Read more...]
