campusreview. com. au
VET & TAFE
The government has recently taken bold action in reforming the VET FEE-HELP scheme following a spate of reports cataloguing some training providers’ abuse of the system. Federation University VET sector researcher professor Erica Smith says a history lesson might help explain where the seeds of the latest controversies were sewn.
Smith first became involved with VET FEE-HELP at its introduction in 2007 – 08, and has tracked its progress ever since. Perhaps the most notable change to the policy, she says, was the 2012 lifting of restrictions that had limited its application. Smith sat down with Campus Review to discuss the program’ s origins and how its evolution has led to some unintended outcomes.
CR: What is your history with the VET FEE-HELP scheme?
ES: When the policy was coming in, ACPET approached me and a colleague to see if we would do some professional development for them. One of the key tenets of VET FEE-HELP was that providers had to have a credit transfer arrangement in place.
So ACPET had already been working hard on the policy, of course, and in touch with the [ government ] departments.
When they realised their members needed more help in negotiating credit transfer arrangements, [ ACPET ] asked us to come in and help their members with some professional development. Because it was still a policy that was being figured out and because the [ legislation ] hadn’ t gone through at that point, we got involved in discussions with the department as well. [ There were ] meetings with people from the department who were responsible for drafting and implementing the policy, as well as ACPET people. The department people, and ACPET, wanted to advise us on what they thought providers needed to know on the credit transfer front.
We had no official involvement beyond credit transfer advice but obviously we learned a lot about what was going on with the other provisions of VET FEE-HELP.
We certainly didn’ t want people to be rushing into VET FEE-HELP just to be able to access the money for their students.
Your role was to help ACPET members understand their obligations under the legislation and how they could use its provisions? The main purpose of our involvement was the credit transfer arrangement – we were asked to work with ACPET on figuring out what might be in it. We were given advice by officials from the departments about what they felt providers needed to know and then we set off on a road trip around Australia, delivering this to packed houses in capital cities – people keen on knowing how to do it.
Obviously they wanted to be able to access VET FEE-HELP and they knew they had to learn how to organise credit transfers. At a lot of the workshops, there were TAFEs as well as private providers, so it certainly wasn’ t just a private provider interest.
What kind of advice were you giving at that stage? I remember one of the first slides we had in our presentation was along the lines of‘ Don’ t do this unless you have the expertise to deliver the qualification’.
Until we had the systems, we certainly didn’ t want people to be rushing into VET FEE-HELP just to be able to access the money for their students.
Our feeling was unless people had the expertise and the particular description area they shouldn’ t be considering it. We knew the highereducation providers wouldn’ t consider credit transfer unless they could see that the RTO had the expertise in the area.
So we gave them a lot of advice because negotiating credit transfer is a difficult thing and universities are notoriously difficult organisations to get the handle on how to approach, and every university is different.
At that time [ pathways ] were the big debate in tertiary education – at the time of the Bradley Review and all of those other things – so everyone was trying to encourage them.
You’ ve said previously that whilst the reason for the credit transfer requirement was not necessarily to deter sharp practice, but rather to encourage movement of students between VET and higher education, that it clearly served the function of restricting numbers and maintaining quality. Could the removal of these requirements have contributed to the rise of so-called unscrupulous training providers signing up new students under VET FEE-HELP despite many having limited prospects of completing their courses and so ending up with huge debts? Exactly. And presumably to providers entering the market just to access the government funding when they haven’ t got any discipline background – which is exactly what we were warning against.
In a sense [ credit transfer ] probably worked [ in encouraging pathways ], to a limited extent, but there could be other ways of encouraging pathways.
That debate has now gone off the boil anyway. There’ s little discussion of pathways now, it seems.
Given all the controversy that has been kicked up around VET FEE- HELP, in the last 12 months especially, why have this credit transfer mechanism and its removal a few years ago not been the centre of more discussion? It could be just a case of short memories.
In Victoria, it was removed several years before [ it was in the rest of the country ] so … some people have probably almost forgotten about it. And maybe it is that people don’ t want to remind the public that the provision was there, in case it gets reinstated.
There could also be legitimate reasons. Say if you’ re a good provider accessing your VET FEE-HELP [ and it is working well ].
Whatever the case, it’ s a bit surprising, and the minister has brought out, or enacted, some new measures recently, which I think are good.
In a system where everyone’ s behaving themselves, you shouldn’ t have to do some of those things and ASQA has got enough work to do without worrying about VET FEE-HELP rorting on top of everything else.
I know you can’ t close the stable door after the horse has bolted so it would be hard to reintroduce the credit transfer requirement but maybe there’ s something else they could do. n
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