campusreview. com. au
VET & TAFE difficult and laden with red tape or multiple compliance hurdles.’“
Birmingham then suggested that,“ It’ s no wonder students have shifted towards university education – which is run under a national scheme – even though vocational education may be much better suited for some of them.”
Dodd was impressed with the minister’ s initiative:“ He now has the chance to carry forward this historic reform and, if he pulls it off, it will be of lasting significance.”
This uncritical piece was followed two weeks later by another complimentary article by Dodd and his colleague Andrew Meares about Birmingham’ s desire and ability to save VET. The article, titled“ Simon Birmingham makes a fresh start in the Education Ministry”, began with this fulsome praise:
“ The encouraging thing about the new education minister is that he recognises the value of vocational education.
“ Simon Birmingham( or Birmo, as he sometimes styles himself) was Christopher Pyne’ s junior minister from last December until new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull appointed him to the senior job …
“ In those nine months as assistant education and training minister, Birmingham had responsibility for the vocational sector and realised that it is the forgotten and greatly underutilised part of the education system.
“ Now, following his meteoric rise to become the senior minister in the portfolio, he is in an excellent position to do something about it and apparently intends to.”
While Birmingham’ s marketing staff would have been delighted with these glowing reports, a jarring note was sounded by two other newspaper articles in mid-late September in The Age about the VET sector being out of control, largely because of the rorting of students who took out loans via the VET FEE-HELP scheme. The first of these two articles, by Michael Bachelard, Henrietta Cook and Matthew Knott, was featured on the front page of The Age, two days after Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister, and referred to a sensational undercover video recording that could be viewed on the newspaper’ s website.
“ A young, prospective salesman walks into Nikhil Talwar’ s office and within minutes, the lure of big, uncomplicated bucks is being dangled in front of him.
“‘ You will see a real chunk of money without any f--- up, Talwar says, in a video secretly recorded earlier this month. We have people who [ sign up ] 10 customers per week, and we give $ 800 [ per sign up ]... so you make $ 8000 per week... $ 32 grand in a month.”
The journalists then explained that“ Talwar is not selling yachts or apartments. He runs a company in Footscray that sells vocational education. It’ s Australia’ s fastest-growing industry by far, and every cent of the money he’ s promising comes from the taxpayer.
“ Last year, the system cost the Commonwealth $ 1.3 billion in subsidies, and rising so fast that it’ s projected to cost $ 4 billion this year.
“ Since Labor’ s home insulation debacle, selling online diplomas has become the quickest get-rich scheme there is. Call centres, door-to-door salesmen, and so-called aggregators are all marketing online courses to new students.”
The journalists noted that Birmingham had tried but failed to stamp out practices such as using free iPads as inducements.
“‘ Clearly,’ admits federal minister Simon Birmingham,‘[ the scheme ] was structured in a way that made it susceptible to shonks and fraudsters,’” the article states.
In response, Birmingham had introduced reforms.“ In March, the Commonwealth banned salesmen offering free laptops or iPads to people they are signing up to courses. Six months later, Talwar brushes the new rule aside as he runs through his sales spiel:‘ We give a free laptop,’ he says.”
In a follow-up article, Michael Bachelard described how“ billions of taxpayer dollars have pumped up the profits of private companies that often have little experience in education”.
“ While enormous concern has been expressed over the federal government’ s plan to deregulate university fees, few have noticed the even more radical deregulation that has taken place in vocational education, and the epic level of fraud that has followed,” Bachelard writes.“ Here, prospective students are much more likely to be unemployed, less educated, older and poorer. They need training to fill the demands of industry for skilled workers.“ Instead, many are being lured by door-to-door salesmen, fake job ads or shopping mall spruikers into dubious online courses in private colleges run by people who are not educators.”
Bachelard observed that two issues are cost and quality.“ The price of each course is up to the college to determine. The only limit is a lifetime vocational learning [ fee cap ] per individual of $ 93,000,” he writes.“ The spectre of $ 100,000 degrees is one reason the Senate has blocked university deregulation, but in vocational education, debts of this size are already a possibility.
“ The Commonwealth spends this money upfront, handing it to the colleges.
“ As for quality, unlike in the heavily regulated university sector, there is no minimum course length, no standardised testing at the end, and precious little oversight of the colleges.
“ And the industry is growing exponentially. This year alone, new students are likely to sign up to $ 4 billion worth of vocational courses – triple the cost of a year ago – most of which is flowing to a plethora of new, small colleges.
“ The industry, by design, is demand driven. But it’ s colleges, not students, driving the demand. They employ an army of salesmen( known euphemistically as‘ brokers’) who can earn millions in profits from taxpayer subsidies.”
What did the assistant minister do? Bachelard writes:“ Birmingham put new controls in place in March [ 2015 ], outlawing the offer of laptops or iPads to potential students as incentives. This was immediately undercut by the salesmen, who simply( legally) give out‘ loan devices’ with no intention of reclaiming them.
“ More reforms will come into place in January [ 2016 ]. The most important means the Commonwealth will no longer pay a lump sum up front to colleges for the whole cost of the course. Payments will come in stages and will be tied to students’ results.
“ But the delayed implementation – which Birmingham said would allow time for the colleges to‘ alter processes and systems’ – means they are making hay while the sun shines. The shonks … have already become millionaires and now have time to think of fresh ways to get around the law.”
Given the VET FEE-HELP national debt is ballooning out of control, it would seem prudent of the new minister to escalate strategies that could rein in this fiasco.
The breezy, self-congratulatory tone of Birmingham’ s media releases and statements do not augur well. The sector requires methodical, sustained and comprehensive repairs to policies and standards, not headline-grabbing gestures such as a federal takeover of VET. ■
Dr John Mitchell is a VET researcher and analyst. Go to jma. com. au
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