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Category: Government
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TDA Newsletter 15 May 2017
Posted at 1:09 pm
May 15th -
Resourcing Australia’s tertiary education sector
Posted at 5:03 pm
May 10thLH Martin Institute
Australian Government expenditure on tertiary education has been consistently at 0.8% of GDP since 2000. There has not been a ‘blowout’ in tertiary education spending. If there is a problem, it is simply that the Government needs to bring the Budget back into balance. The contribution that can be made to that objective from the tertiary education sector is at best modest, writes Mark Warburton.
While direct expenditure on higher education student places under the Commonwealth Grant Scheme (CGS) has increased considerably since 2008, this has been substantially offset since 2011 by 13 major savings measures which have reduced spending in other programs of support for higher education teaching. Overall expenditure on higher education teaching has risen broadly in line with GDP. Since 2000, student contributions have increased by 187 per cent, CGS subsidies by 158 per cent and GDP by 144 per cent.This contrasts markedly with what has been happening in the vocational education and training (VET) sector. Since 2009-10, the Australian Government’s nominal expenditure on VET has declined by $0.6 billion or 16 per cent and this decline will have reached $1.2 billion or 30 per cent by 2017-18.
There is currently a lack of coherent strategy aimed at ensuring that VET resourcing is being used efficiently. The expansion in VET FEE HELP that has occurred could potentially ensure that VET resourcing is maintained despite expenditure reductions. Currently, there appears to be substantial disparity in the level of resourcing of the VET sector in comparison to that in the higher education sector and it is not clear that this relates to a substantial difference in their need for resources. The distribution of VET resources is changing rapidly and is not fully understood. Some areas of VET activity are declining in ways that may have adverse impacts on the availability of skills in the Australian labour market.
Mark Warburton is an Honorary Senior Fellow of the LH Martin Institute. He was Principal Analyst for Universities Australia during 2015 and was in the Australian Public Service prior to that. He worked on higher education funding policy for around nine years, implementing many aspects of the Transforming Australia’s Higher Education System policy statement and then modifying them in response to subsequent budget pressures.
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TAFE does the heavy lifting
Posted at 11:47 am
Apr 12thReport shows mismatch between federal VET student loan funding and skill priorities
TDA NEWS | 12 April 2016
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A TAFE Directors Australia (TDA)-commissioned analysis of official data reveals ‘for profit’ private training colleges have gained a massive 75% share of the $3 billion Commonwealth VET FEE-HELP funding, while the public TAFE sector continues to do the “heavy lifting”.
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The research was undertaken for TDA by the National Centre for Vocational Education Research
(NCVER). TDA sought the NCVER analysis to assess courses, funding, educational outcomes, market share, completions and employment by provider type, and also to track the source of VET FEE-HELP loans.The report, Trends in public and private VET provision: participation, financing and outcomes, accessed NCVER’s own National VET Provider collection, supplemented by preliminary Total VET Activity (TVA) data for 2014, and included, for the first time, an analysis of the Commonwealth’s official VET FEE-HELP data.
The performance of Australia’s 57 TAFE Institutes emerges strongly, dominating all major state and territory VET-funded ‘fields of education’ and trade apprenticeships.
The chief executive of TDA, Martin Riordan said:
This analysis clearly demonstrates that despite the extraordinary growth of private colleges, the TAFE sector is doing the heavy lifting in delivering high quality skills, qualifications and jobs.
Even more encouraging, TAFE emerged as the dominant training provider, with superior completion and employment rates, even as private sector competition intensified.
He said the findings have disturbing consequences for federal tertiary education policy.
While TAFE delivered 63% of enrolments across the majority of fields of education, Commonwealth allocation of student loans to TAFE fell to just 20% in 2014, and the government’s own emergency legislation to halt private college rorts has worsened this reduction in funding for TAFE students.
See
Trends in public and private VET provision: participation, financing and outcomes
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Exponential growth of VET-FEE HELP as sector opened to private colleges
Posted at 10:42 am
Apr 12thThe looting of VET FEE-HELP
7 April 2016
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A report presented on ABC Radio National provides an insight into the thinking of the providers who have virtually looted VET FEE-HELP: it was all within the rules, apparently, so that made it all right. As this extract shows, the greater part of the loot flowed to a handful of providers, all of which were relatively recently established, with no track record of provision, let alone quality provision. In the space of a couple of years, for example, Ivan Brown, turned a $500 start-up investment into a stake in a listed company worth $180 million (Australian Careers Network), all built on the back of government training subsidies. The whole report is worth reading – ‘I’m not a cowboy’: Phoenix Institute investor maintains private college did nothing wrong.
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Outflows under the VET FEE-HELP scheme have grown exponentially in recent years, particularly after
2012 when the Gillard government struck new national partnership agreements with the states and territories that set ambitious targets for growth in vocational qualifications and tied funding to the opening up of the training industry to private competition.When it was opened up in 2009, the scheme lent out $26 million, which grew to $118 million in 2010, $205 million in 2011, $325 million in 2012 and $699 million in 2013. Over the first five years of the scheme inclusive, coinciding roughly with the term of the former Labor government, the VET FEE-HELP loans totalled $1.4 billion.
Under the Coalition, VET FEE-HELP loans leapt to $1.8 billion in 2014 and a staggering $3 billion in 2015.
That makes a total exceeding $6 billion lent out during the entire VET FEE-HELP scheme, of which three-quarters is estimated to have flowed to private training colleges. According to Background Briefing‘s analysis, based on official data provided in parliament, and incorporating preliminary estimates of total VET FEE-HELP funding in 2015, the eight biggest private training colleges received $2.2 billion between them over the first seven years of the scheme.
Those eight colleges are Evocca ($607 million), Careers Australia ($482 million), Study Group Australia ($300 million), Think! ($223 million), the Australian Institute of Professional Education ($210 million), Unique ($140 million), Phoenix ($113 million) and Cornerstone ($94 million).
Of those eight, four have now been subject of prosecution by the ACCC and/or deregistration action by the ASQA, including AIPE, Unique, Phoenix and Cornerstone. Three others—Careers Australia, Evocca, and Study Group—have been subject of media exposes for hard-sell practices. All three have been audited by ASQA and, while found compliant, had extra reporting requirements imposed. Study Group was linked to the collapse of Aspire College and Evocca is facing a class action, and recently laid off hundreds of staff.Taxpayers have been left counting the cost. Recent estimates suggest the government will have to write off $3 billion in bad debts in vocational education alone.
See
‘I’m not a cowboy’: Phoenix Institute investor maintains private college did nothing wrong.
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Turnbull loads the starter’s gun
Posted at 12:34 pm
Mar 21st“The time for playing games is over.”
ABC News | 21 March 2016
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Malcolm Turnbull is bringing back both houses of parliament for an extraordinary sitting of parliament in April to deal with union corruption legislation, saying he will dissolve both houses of parliament if the bills are not passed, with an election on 2 July.
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Turnbull told a snap media conference he will bring forward the federal budget by one week to 3 May , to allow more time for the union bills to be considered.
The time has come for the Senate to recognise its responsibilities and help advance our economic plans, rather than standing in the way. The restoration of the ABCC [Australian Building and Construction Commission] is a critical economic reform.
The election timetable
April 18 – Parliament to come back to consider industrial relations legislation.
May 3 – The new the budget date.
May 10 – Traditional date of the budget.
May 11 – The cut-off for the Prime Minister to set a double dissolution election.
July 2 – Possible double dissolution date.
July 16 – A double dissolution must be held by this date.
August 6 – Earliest date for a regular House of Representatives plus half-Senate poll
January 14 – Latest possible date for election.
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The Scan # 177 17 March 2016
Posted at 12:55 pm
Mar 17th
News
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Fed takeover of VET unlikely
14 March 2016 | The newly-minted Commonwealth minister for skills, Scott Ryan, has poured cold water on a proposed Commonwealth takeover of vocational education and training set out in a draft of a paper to go to the next meeting of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG). Under the proposal, TAFE fees would be deregulated and TAFEs would receive the same funding. While education Simon Birmingham has strongly advocated a Commonwealth takeover, Ryan says there are strong arguments to maintain the current system. Ryan said redesigning the troubled VET FEE-HELP scheme – which has blown out in costs and led to the targeting of vulnerable and disadvantaged students – is his top priority. He stressed he did not want to punish private providers offering high quality courses and that the sector has to be flexible enough to respond to changing economic needs…[ READ MORE ]…
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Deakin doesn’t see a future at Warrnambool
14 March 2016 | Deakin University is considering withdrawing from its Warrnambool campus, about 250km south-west of Melbourne, amid a steep decline in student numbers, from 1,342 students in 2011 to a forecast 872 students this year. Deakin vice-chancellor Professor Jane den Hollander said the university hopes to maintain the campus, but that “all options” are on the table. den Hollander made it pretty clear that the preferred option is another provider taking over the campus but if that can’t be negotiated then closing the campus is a real option. She said there is a growing gap between what Deakin offers and the “particular needs of the region’s students, businesses and the broader community” which is mostly at certificate and diploma leve). While Deakin doesn’t itself offer sub-degree programs, it does have partnerships with other providers. In particular Deakin College, formerly MBIT, provides a Certificate IV in Tertiary Preparation and a range of diploma programs on the three other Deakin campuses (Burwood, Geelong Waterfront and Waurn Ponds), which provide pathways to Deakin degree programs…[ READ MORE ]….
Monash to exit Berwick
8 March 2016 | Monash University says it will close its Berwick campus in Melbourne’s outer south-east unless it can partner with another university on the site. The university said it will stop teaching at Berwick by the end of 2018 after a deal with Victoria University (VU) to use the campus fell through. Monash University vice-chancellor Professor Margaret Gardner said enrolments at the campus had been consistently low, making it difficult to provide a “full student experience”. She said demand for higher education in the south-east has not grown to the extent it was once anticipated, with many local students tending to go past the local campus in preference for other campuses. There only three faculties on the campus — business, education, nursing — and enrolments are low, with only 1,600. Just 300 new students enrolled at the campus in 2016. Monash has 67,000 students overall, with almost 30,000 at Clayton and more than 20,000 at Caulfield and 3,800 students at its Peninsula campus…[ READ MORE ]…
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Labor spokesperson Sharon Bird
Labor promises national VET review
16 March 2016 | Labor will launch a comprehensive review of the vocational education and training sector – equivalent to the landmark Gonski Review into school funding and the Bradley Review of higher education – if it wins office at the next election. The review would be the first such inquiry into the VET sector since the Kangan Report in 1974, which actually coined the term TAFE. Labor has also promised a National Priority Plan for TAFE and proposes to cap tuition fees for the VET sector, establish a new ombudsman for the sector and halve the lifetime limit for VET FEE-HELP loans…[ READ MORE ]….
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Collaboration and the case for certainty
University Australia’s election agenda
17 March 2016
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In this extract from his speech to the recent Universities Australia Conference (which was mainly about research, innovation and collaboration), Universities Australia’s chair Barney Glover sets out in broad terms the university sector’s policy agenda for this election year. He prefaced his comments with the observation that the sector has been subject almost 2 years of policy insecurity and uncertainty which has taken a toll on the ability of universities to plan and allocate resources (it’s actually more like 4 years, taking into account the churn that was going on in the latter days of the Gillard government). In October last year, Universities Australia released its policy statement – Keep it clever 2016. This sets out in detail the context of its policy agenda (“universities are really important to the nation’s present and future security and well being”); what’s needed to drive research and innovation; public funding support for students; and government support for international education.
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Policy reform
Reform is difficult at the best of times and is made more difficult when grand reform ideas are quickly taken off the table, the risk being the
eradication of anything remotely catalytic.It’s vitally important that we establish a tone that speaks to the possibilities of reform rather than the limits of party-political paradigms.
This is especially relevant in this election year but more so in light of the considerable challenges Australia’s universities face in the decades to come.
In a setting where reform is approached with such reductionist cynicism; just what is it we are missing?
I would argue we are missing the chance to do the very thing, as a nation, I demonstrated we can be so good at in my earlier remarks on research collaboration.
That is, we are missing the opportunity to grow, develop and excel through a cognisant, progressive and collaborative approach to reform.
It would be remiss of me to reflect so pointedly on the dynamics of Australian political reform without addressing higher education reform. In many respects this issue has been subject to the many pressures I’ve discussed.
Without traversing the policy and political landscape since the announcement of the government’s higher education reform package in 2014, it is important to note, that despite the Senate’s opposition, the reforms in their original form continue to be government policy as reflected in financial and budget papers.
With Senate reform looming, these are far from “dead in the water” – as some have suggested.
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Plan B
Collapsed training college owners paid themselves $20 million
14 March 2016
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The ABC’s 7.30 Report has reported that the owners of a major training college that collapsed after the Government cracked down on ‘study now, pay later’ loans appear to have had a long-term plan to cut and run from the sector.
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Global Intellectual Holding, which owned a number of providers, including Keystone College and Aspire, was a vocational education giant and its demise has particularly hit students in one of Victoria’s most disadvantaged regions.
Former Keystone student Liz Jolley has been a disability pensioner for 30 years and was signed up to a $22,000 Diploma of Interactive Digital Media, which as she admits was clearly beyond her.
She was recruited by Jacob Di Battista, who worked for National Training and Development, the marketing arm of Global Holdings. He trawled the streets of Broadmeadows, outside Centrelink and public housing, targeting everyone, including the homeless. He told 7.30:
Whether you’re in a wheelchair, scooter, blind, disabled, don’t really care. You’re a target.
Click image to go to 7.30 Report
Sitting at the top of Global Holdings were Aloi Burgess and Roger Williams, who’d grown the company into an $80 million enterprise. But then in 2015, the government clamped down on many private college recruiting practices. Having failed to sell the company, last month Burgess and Williams put it into liquidation.
This might have been a disaster for students and staff, but not for Burgess and Williams. The last financial report filed by Global shows they had a Plan B, a trust called The Collective Exit Strategy.
Before Global collapsed, the company lent $4 million to each of the directors personal companies and paid each $6 million in dividends.
While the liquidator reported apparent breaches of directors’ duties to the corporate regulator, Burgess and Williams are nowhere to be found.
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Comment & analysis
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The Year to date
Plus ça change
11 March 2016
There’s a lot to catch up with but, as they say, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (which is, according to the estimable Wiktionary, an epigram by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in the January 1849 issue of his journal Les Guêpes (“The Wasps”), meaning “the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing.”)
As previously reported, changes to the VET FEE-HELP (VFH) scheme legislated late last year provides some better protection of students from the carpetbaggers who have looted the scheme and dudded the students. The government proposes to spend this year look at ways to rort-proof it from the likes of Phoenix. But as so many people have asked: how did it get to this?
Part of the answer is a near pathological obsession by governments – of all stripes – with “deregulation” and “marketisation”. As former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chair observed last year, “…..this huge waste of government money is the “inevitable consequence” of governments funding the private sector to deliver a public good. From the home insulation debacle to export market development grants, film industry tax incentives, health and education subsidies, Samuel says the same thing has been happening “as long as I’ve been alive”:
Business is much, much smarter than governments, and business knows how to exploit and you can’t deal with that using people sitting in Canberra or Spring Street. The rogues – and they’ll be there in any industry – they say with glee, all the way to the bank, ‘Come in spinner’!”
This is not to argue against competition and a role for private providers but you have to have, among other things, a robust regulatory system. Quite evidently, this has not been the case.
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The state of VET in Australia
A fractured system
16 March 2016
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In a policy paper, VET funding in Australia: Background trends and future directions, Peter Noonan from Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute says the low priority traditionally accorded the vocational sector has been exacerbated in recent years by wild inconsistencies between states on what they funded and for how much, ad hoc federal funding programs, rorting and distortions caused by VET FEE-HELP and the relentless push to reduce costs for both levels of government.
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While there are 200,000 more VET enrolments than there were 10 years ago, enrolments have been trending downwards since 2012.
This compares to higher education enrolments which have risen 43% over the same period and which continue to rise. Given the full implementation of the demand driven system in 2012, which enables universities to enrol as many students as they choose, there’s an obvious causal link there, which has particularly hit TAFE enrolments (a double whammy for TAFE, given aggressive growth in the private VET sector).
The paper notes that the Bradley Review (of which Noonan was a member) identified the risk
…that some states and territories face major fiscal constraints, which may lead them to reduce their investment in VET in the near future, leading to skewed and uneven investment between the sectors over time if a demand-based funding model is adopted for higher education.
The Bradley Review further argued that:
moving to a demand-based approach to funding higher education cannot be done in isolation from VET. Changing higher education funding but leaving VET funding untouched would compound existing distortions.
Which is exactly what seems to have happened.
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The case for a national VET review
16 March 2016
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Following is an extract from a submission by the LH Martin Institute to the House of Representatives Inquiry into TAFE (May 2013) which argues the need for a comprehensive national inquiry into VET.
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…policy-makers, in particular, but also industry, the VET provider sector and analysts need to be mindful of the sometimes enervating effect of constant changes to and attempts to remake the VET system. A restless, seemingly ceaseless search for perfection seems to characterise the official mindset about the VET sector. At any one time, it is almost certainly likely to be that one or other or several of Australia’s nine government jurisdictions will be inquiring into VET and or have in train a process of “skills reform”.
The sector would undoubtedly benefit from a period of stability, certainty and consolidation.
That stated, it is, of course, a requirement that policy settings and system architecture including funding arrangements be understood to be and broadly accepted to be “about right”. Whether such a condition of broad consensus is achievable appears moot: it has, evidently, proved beyond achievement for a decade or more.
LH Martin Institute has stated the case for a broad overarching, root and branch review of VET, as has occurred in recent years in higher education (the Bradly Review) and schools education (the Gonski Review). It’s well past time: such a fundamental review has not occurred since the Kangan Committee in 1973/74.
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Life & stuff
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14 March 2016
Oh Canada….
Elegy for a lost child
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On 2 September last year Turkish police found the body of a 3-year-old Syrian refugee – Aylan Kurdi – who had drowned, together with his 5-year-old brother Ghalib and mother Rehan, in the Mediterranean Sea while trying to escape Syria and eventually make their way to Canada. The harrowing images of the toddler’s lifeless body went viral, driving home the danger and desperation of the refugee crisis in Syria and inspiring a powerful emotional response from artists around the world. Australian singer/songwriter Missy Higgins, who’d recently become a mum herself, penned and recorded this poignant elegy. All proceeds from the sales of this recording are going to the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre. Missy Higgins is currently touring – check here for places and dates.
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Two footnotes:
- Canada’s response to the humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Syria and flowing into Europe has been to take 20,000 Syrian refugees since September. Australia has promised to resettle 12,000 but has so far managed to only “process” a handful of the refugees.
- Two Syrian men have each been sentenced to more than four years jail for people smuggling in relation to the drownings.
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Noticeboard
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The VET Store
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The VET Store is a service by the VET Development Centre which provides access to a range of information to support VET practitioners in the work they do.
Click image to find out more!
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Collaboration and the case for certainty
Posted at 9:06 am
Mar 17thUniversity Australia’s election agenda
17 March 2016
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In this extract from his speech to the recent Universities Australia Conference (which was mainly about research, innovation and collaboration), Universities Australia’s chair Barney Glover sets out in broad terms the university sector’s policy agenda for this election year. He prefaced his comments with the observation that the sector has been subject almost 2 years of policy insecurity and uncertainty which has taken a toll on the ability of universities to plan and allocate resources (it’s actually more like 4 years, taking into account the churn that was going on in the latter days of the Gillard government). In October last year, Universities Australia released its policy statement – Keep it clever 2016. This sets out in detail the context of its policy agenda (“universities are really important to the nation’s present and future security and well being”); what’s needed to drive research and innovation; public funding support for students; and government support for international education.
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Policy reform
Reform is difficult at the best of times and is made more difficult when grand reform ideas are quickly taken off the table, the risk being the
eradication of anything remotely catalytic.It’s vitally important that we establish a tone that speaks to the possibilities of reform rather than the limits of party-political paradigms.
This is especially relevant in this election year but more so in light of the considerable challenges Australia’s universities face in the decades to come.
In a setting where reform is approached with such reductionist cynicism; just what is it we are missing?
I would argue we are missing the chance to do the very thing, as a nation, I demonstrated we can be so good at in my earlier remarks on research collaboration.
That is, we are missing the opportunity to grow, develop and excel through a cognisant, progressive and collaborative approach to reform.
It would be remiss of me to reflect so pointedly on the dynamics of Australian political reform without addressing higher education reform. In many respects this issue has been subject to the many pressures I’ve discussed.
Without traversing the policy and political landscape since the announcement of the government’s higher education reform package in 2014, it is important to note, that despite the Senate’s opposition, the reforms in their original form continue to be government policy as reflected in financial and budget papers.
With Senate reform looming, these are far from “dead in the water” – as some have suggested.
The way forward for higher education
What we don’t yet know, is whether these will continue to be the government’s position in the lead up to the election. And here it is worth reiterating that Universities Australia had suggested a number of amendments to these proposals.
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The sector will never accept that maintaining the level of quality expected by our students, employers and the community can be achieved through reducing the level public investment in universities.
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Nor is it consistent with the government’s stated aim of having innovation at the heart of a strong economy.
Almost two years of policy insecurity and uncertainty is taking its toll on the ability of universities to plan and allocate resources in their student’s best interests.
It is difficult to imagine any other industry tolerating such policy instability.
Yet when it comes to higher education – the majority contributor to Australia’s third largest export industry, the cornerstone of Australia’s innovation future, and a $140 billion contributor to our economy in 2014 – the rules are different.
It remains the case that policy and funding certainty and stability continues to be the sector’s number one advocacy priority.
The opposition has released a comprehensive higher education policy but questions remain – not least around base funding and the means for sustaining the system over the longer term.
In recognising the issue, education minister Simon Birmingham has broadly consulted with stakeholders as he considers options for change.
We encourage the government, and again I don’t think it unreasonable, to make its position clear – sooner, rather than later.
The time has come for a national agreement on the future of higher education in this country.
We have strong views, we have our own ideas, we have invested a great deal in the research and analysis that informs those ideas and we have strived to posit a way forward but we do not pretend to have all the answers.
It is no secret that while there is a great deal on which vice-chancellors are in substantial and unwavering agreement, there are matters of continuing debate among us.
However, the most important debate on higher education in this election year is not the one within the university sector but the public debate: the engagement our political leaders have with the Australian people.
Universities Australia, like all of us, wants that debate to be open and informed.
We believe a public debate that reflects the complexity of these issues is critical and it should be one in which the respective parties clearly articulate the following:
- the principles that guide and the objectives to be achieved by their higher education policies;
- the key reforms that will deliver those objectives;
- the proposed means for delivering a sustainable and stable higher education system; and
- the implications of these policies for students, universities, industry and indeed government itself over the longer term.
So with an election in the offing, I take this opportunity on behalf of Universities Australia to urge both parties to engage in a sophisticated public debate and purposeful discussion on the higher education, research and indeed, innovation challenges we face today and in decades to come.
The discovery of gravitational waves and the enormous possibilities of the SKA not only inspire us, but remind us of just what can be achieved when universities, researchers, industry and governments share their knowledge, combine their experience, and apply their expertise to an agreed end.
It reminds us that innovation not only requires deep and sustained collaboration between and beyond universities but patient and serious investment. It reminds us that we should dare to imagine what might lie beyond what we know today.
If we are as a nation serious about our intellectual development, about research and innovation, about a new economy fuelled by ideas then we need to think about education as an essential government responsibility requiring high levels of sustained investment over the long term.
We need to think about education as we think about the economy: the means for personal security and national prosperity.
We need to think about education in the way we think about the arts: as food for the soul and as the expression of who we are as individuals and as a society.
That is why this debate matters.
The time really has come for a national agreement on the future of higher education.
Click image to go to statement
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It just beggars belief
Posted at 2:10 pm
Dec 9th9 December 2015
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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 2014 for just 5 completions, which would work out at over $10 million for each completion !!!
And while VET FEE-HELP was being looted, what was ASQA, the sector regulator, doing? Not a lot it seems: it got around to launching an investigation into AIPE in November 2015 – that’s right, last month.
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ACPET dismayed, as well
Posted at 9:57 am
Dec 8th8 December 2015
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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, blind.
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Of course the last week was, and the week coming, will be dominated by discussion about the Higher Education Support Amendment (VET FEE-HELP Reform) Bill 2015.
As you would all be aware, the Government introduced the changes with no forewarning or consultation.
On hearing of the changes, I flew to Canberra to meet with Ministers, the Opposition and Senators in an attempt to rectify the problems, particularly the Freezing of VFH accounts at 2015 levels. Unfortunately, the Bill was passed that day, less than 24 hours after it was introduced.
Many members have expressed their concerns and it is important that you continue to do so. What disappointed me was that I, along with other representatives from the sector are appointed to a VFH Reform Working Group. To be on this group we were required to sign detailed confidentiality agreements. The Group only met a week ago where we discussed a range of reforms. Unfortunately there was not a word of the changes the government was about to introduce. Not sure I will attend this group again.
In terms of the future, I have been advised in no uncertain terms that neither the Minister nor Department have any discretion to vary VFH allocations for 2016 (based on the formula in the legislation), and that the Government had two choices, to close VFH down or to freeze the program at current levels. This means that the only way to fix this is for further legislative amendments, which can’t be until next year, assuming the Government agrees to do so.
ACPET will continue to address our concerns at all levels of the Government.
So, how did we actually get here?
There have been some strong voices this week apportioning blame for the VFH meltdown. However, if you are under any illusions the answers lie in the legislative amendments.
Let’s start by remembering what has been happening under this program:
- Student loans have more than doubled to $1.74B in 2014
- Since commencing in 2009, $3.1B has been funded
- Student numbers increased by 103% from 2013 to 2014
- Completion rates remain at about 10% below that of sector average
- On-line VFH completion sits at 7% completion rate compared to 23% for students funded outside of the program.
In a +$3B program the Government only last week introduced changes to give it the power to:
- Pay providers considered high risk in arrears to ensure student data is authentic
- Suspending payments for new enrolments where there are concerns about a provider’s performance until agreed actions to lift performance are completed
- Ensuring providers have appropriate tuition assurance for their number of students
- Appointing investigators to better cope with expertise and resourcing requirements.
Really?
Surely we could not have a +$3B program where the Government could not investigate rorting, suspend payments and even monitor performance? Without these checks and balances this could only mean Government has been approving this phenomenal growth, in a relatively small number of public and private providers, blind.
The case of the prosecution rests.
While some argue ACPET should have done more, and this is perhaps the case, in the weight of the lack of program management, where even as the Tuition Assurance operators we did not know of the growth until after it happened (12 months later) we were swimming upstream, and that is putting it politely.
All of our Senate Inquiry submissions and public statements have pushed for changes. Yes some of them have now been introduced but the Freeze really was ill conceived. If they had consulted we could have had a bi partisan approach to real change, fully supported by the quality end of our proud industry.
And despite all of this, still no national Ombudsman.
While we have distributed what we know of the implications of the changes, if you have questions about how to calculate your notional allocations for next year, please contact your local executive officer.
Other news in the media of course relates to the closure of Vocation RTOs and the Phoenix Campus in Melbourne. Our only priority is to focus on the students and we are working with administrators and government and the management of Phoenix to ensure the students can continue their studies.
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Once was TAFE
Posted at 9:24 am
Dec 8th8 December 2015
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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 manifestly inadequate regulatory procedures, the Commonwealth could basically repeat the mistakes of Victoria in extending access to VET FEE-HELP – and then let it run unchecked for a couple of years.
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The past couple of years have been like Christmas time for carpetbaggers in the Victorian VET sector. The “skills reform” initiated by the former Labor government opened up public funding of vocational educational and training provision to all comers. And as to the field of dreams, the private RTOs have flocked. At the end of September 2011, 721 providers were delivering government subsidised enrolments in Victoria, almost 80 more than at the same time in 2010 and 160 more than in 2008. The share of government subsidised enrolments by private providers increased from 14% in 2008 to 36% at the end of September 2011 and is now in excess of 50%.
These are sudden and dramatic shifts, which have resulted in the apparent destabilisation of a number of the public TAFE institutes. In 2011, the combined surpluses of the 14 standalone TAFEs in Victoria, which fund really important things like infrastructure and facilities, halved, from$192m to $98m. Analysis by sector specialist Gavin Moodie reveals that if you discount one-off capital items, the underlying operating results are pretty bleak, with only 4 of the 14 standalone TAFEs operating in the black.Of the dual sector universities, at least Victoria University (VU) is struggling and probably Swinburne. There have been successive waves of redundancies at VU and another wave looks imminent, with a major restructuring of the university just announced. The TAFE activities, up to Cert IV, are being spun off into a technical college, which could well be the first step towards ultimate divestment.In public policy terms, the character of an institution delivering a qualification – public or private, TAFE or university, state domiciled or interstate – doesn’t actually matter, so long as what it is providing represents value in terms of both cost and quality.
It could be argued that, setting aside the inevitable implementation issues that come with such a systemic shift, the evidence of the Victorian market-based reforms is that opening the publicly funded training sector up to a greater role for private providers has led to increased participation, improving the skills of the workforce and therefore productivity, and improved equity by increasing both the choice available to individuals and access.
That could be argued but you would need to cross your fingers behind your back (and definitely not cross your heart and hope to die) to argue it.
The stories of utter rorting are legion – like the private RTO that grew enrolments in education and training by 4000% in just a year or the private RTO that offered sporting organisations kickbacks to spruik their courses.
The Scan did its own random survey of private providers and it seems that the emerging industry standard is that you can secure a CERT III/IV with about 40 hours of work and diploma with 60-80 hours. The nominal hours on your personal training plan will show 400-800 hours to comply with the AQF but wink, wink, nudge nudge etc. And if you’re doing it online (as many of the offerings are), you needn’t even bother with that: invite your friends around for a study session, provide beverages and comestibles, and you could knock it over in no time at all.
The end result is that any VET qualification in Victoria delivered outside the public TAFE system over the past couple of years has to be considered suspect (which is, of course, tough on the many reputable private RTOs). The qualifications system has been debased.
So the Victorian Coalition government inherited a training mess. And a budget problem: state sourced expenditure on VET has gone from $800m in 2008 to possibly $1.5 billion this financial year – and growing.
The government obviously had to act, both to protect the integrity of the training system and to protect the public purse.
In October 2011, funding to support what might be broadly termed the community service obligations (CSO) of the biggest TAFEs was slashed by 25%, apprenticeship fees were increased and funding for the seven fastest growing areas of enrolment (including business studies, hospitality and fitness training) was reduced to rein in runaway growth (and dubious quality of provision) in the private sector. The public TAFEs were reported to be “stunned” and “shocked .
Measures to be announced in the budget on 1 May, “pre-announced” in The Australian on 28 April, have elevated the attitude of TAFE stakeholders to apoplectic. By one of those quirks of fate, the Australian Education Union was holding its annual TAFE conference in Melbourne on 28/29 April and it was the topic du jour (check the traffic #TAFE on Twitter).
In effect, the government is introducing “competitive neutrality” into the training market. None of this nonsense about funding TAFEs to meet any sort of CSO: an additional base funding allowance of up to 22%, designed to help them provide a full range of training services, is to be removed. Funding rates are to be slashed from between $6.50 and $8.00 to less than $2.00 an hour per student, in business, hospitality, retail, customer contact, process manufacturing, events, fitness and sport.
On the upside, high-demand courses in high-cost areas such as roof tiling, aeroskills and mechanical trades will attract between $11.00 and $12.50 an hour. This obviously favours TAFE because, at the moment, such training is dominated by TAFE but under the new “competitively neutral” funding arrangements that may change (and quickly, too).
We really need to await the full budget detail to draw final conclusions: the government has got the bad news out of the way so will there be any measures to soften the apparent blow to TAFE – for example, something to support the already wobbly regional TAFEs? Peter Hall, the skills minister, is a National Party member based in Gippsland, so you would think he might be uncomfortable leaving regional TAFEs to simply swing in the breeze (he certainly has been in the past – Drop in TAFE enrolments concerning).
But the feeling among TAFE stakeholders is one of despondency, unremitting gloom and doom. As one authoritative commentator put it to The Scan, TAFE in Victoria is “rooted”, or words to that effect. Another stakeholder observed that the “mad Victorians”, having stuffed up the international sector, are now doing the same to the domestic market.
We’ll see. Publicly provided TAFE will survive, for the time being at least, but it is hardly likely to prosper. You can see a path where many of the TAFEs become residualised, with underutilised assets and need “special assistance” to cover declining revenues. This runs counter, of course, to the logic of “marketisation” as it has finally emerged in Victoria and so you end up at privatisation.
And you ask the question “why”? Certainly the disorderly and disruptive process of skills reform in Victoria doesn’t seem to have served any public good: it’s blown the budget and debased the qualifications system. And it’s degraded what was once such an important public asset and contributor to the public good: Victoria’s public TAFE system.
See
Victorian skills reform archive
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