22 July 2015 - The Australian
Julie Hare
Bill Dwyer, a credit and debt solicitor with the Redfern Legal Centre told the Senate Inquiry into private education and training providers that marketing agents and brokers were targeting seriously vulnerable people to sell worthless and overpriced qualifications.
Mr Dwyer told the public hearing in Sydney that his client was ill and struggling when she was charged $38,000 for a diploma. He said for many of his clients the debt only served to increase their levels of disadvantage.
“It entrenches their disadvantage really. They are not able to get credit to start a small business or get their lives back on track,” Ms Bird said.
The hearing also heard from the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s Stephen Bolton that “people don’t have the skills that their piece of paper says they do”.
Ms Bird said she and Mr Carr had approached ANAO late last year after multiple media stories highlighted rorting of VET Fee-Help by private colleges. The Auditor-General had listed it for consideration in the second half of the year.
“Just last week at the Senate Education and Employment References Committee, further evidence confirmed that there has been failures of regulation and market design leading to a proliferation of opportunistic and substandard training providers costing taxpayers and students millions of dollars,” Ms Bird and Senator Carr wrote.
Ms Bird told the HES she applauded regulatory changes made by assistant training minister Simon Birmingham, but more needed to be done.
“We think the auditor could add value by looking at how issues are managed and dealt with by the department.”
Ms Bird said the complexity of the vocational education sector made it open to rorting.
“There are 1.5 million students in any given year and over 5000 RTOs,” she said.
Ms Bird said the national regulator ASQA was doing a good job, but the problem with free market policies in education was that students are young, ill-informed and impressionable.
“Education is not like any other sector. Students don’t know the value of the course until they graduate and they are not very well informed. Information is important but the MySkills is not going to be the answer — it doesn’t even clearly show the fees for privately delivered courses.”
Read the article on The Australian website.
