VET & TAFE
campusreview.com.au
Inside
Open Universities’
VET exit
Unprecedented competition and
a raft of shady rivals led OUA to
close Open Training Institute.
Paul Wappett interviewed by Patrick Avenell
O
pen Universities Australia recently announced it would
be shuttering its vocational training business, Open
Training Institute, after the current cohort of students
completes its courses, and would be closing its books to new
enrolments immediately.
Courses offered by OTI included accounting, administration,
human resources, project management, and workplace health
and safety.
Chief executive Paul Wappett spoke with Campus Review
about this decision and what it means for the industry and a small
number of staff he said would be leaving the business over the next
six months due to the closure.
Wappett was highly critical of the unseemly behaviour of OTI’s
rivals, with particular reference to the inducements being offered to
prospective students to encourage them to sign up for courses.
20
CR: You’ve made the decision to cease enrolling new students
through OTI and to essentially finish with the current cohort and
then discontinue it. Is that correct?
PW: That’s right. We made a decision based on the fact that we
have five different lines of business, all of which were competing
for capital and looking for investment into the future. Our view
was that the vocational training business is one we don’t see
ourselves having a long-term future in, so we made the decision
to concentrate our efforts in our higher education business. In
doing so, we were very clear about making sure that we made the
commitment to our existing students that they would be supported
through the end of their qualifications.
What were some of the reasons you think OTI didn’t quite take off to
the extent you obviously were hoping for when you first launched it?
There have been some changes in the marketplace in the time
we’ve been involved in the sector. For example, we made a
conscious decision not to use VET FEE-HELP for our students in
the early days, but to price our programs [in a way that showed
students value]. That was because VET FEE-HELP was available for
only some of those qualifications and diplomas, and we wanted to
make sure we were making Certificate 3 and Certificate 4 courses
available as well and not disadvantaging those students. New
providers were coming into the market place and taking advantage