Why won’t the issue of for-profit Australian vocational education and training (VET) go away, even with the long-awaited and much-welcomed replacement of the flawed loan program VET FEE-HELP with VET Student Loans?
CCA CEO, Dr Don Perlgut, addresses this question in his latest blog post on the CCA website.
Dr Perlgut notes that, “There is an essential contradiction between quality, outcomes-based skills training for the whole of Australia … and providing education using the ‘for-profit’ model.”
His post reminds us that the “overwhelming majority - yes, two-thirds - of Australian’s VET delivery is now undertaken by for-profit private institutions,” and that “students at private colleges undertake fewer subject hours than those at TAFEs to achieve the same qualifications.”
Craig Fowler, head of NCVER asks: “Is that greater efficiency or is it lower quality?”
Read the rest of the blog post here.
Update on 28 May 2017:
The loud collapse of Careers Australia - announced in a late night text to students on 25 May 2017 - means that we have not seen the end of the difficulties caused to Australia by the private for-profit VET providers.
