campusreview.com.au
VET & TAFE
A Shakespearean drama
The sector’s recent history provides the ingredients
for a racy tale about a sector with a tragic flaw.
By John Mitchell
T
here is not much point in dwelling
on past events for their own
sake. My first qualification was
an honours degree in history, and one of
the main views I developed during that
program was that the study of history is
valuable in helping explain to us what may
be happening now and what might happen
in the near future.
Hence my primary reason for reflecting
on the recent history of VET is to find
explanations for how and why the current
mess in the sector was created and clues
about whether and how that mess can
be cleaned up. For instance, is the current
mess in VET the result of widely held beliefs
or ideologies, or of deliberate actions by
individuals or small groups, perhaps driven
by ego and ambition? Is it the result of fate,
accidents and random events, or a mix of
all three? If we can explain the causes of
the current debacles in VET, there is some
potential chance of fixing them.
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RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE MESS
First, what are some key components
of the current mess in VET and who is
responsible? The answer depends on
whom you listen to. Various governments
and their media departments would prefer
us to focus only on the biggest calamity in
the history of VET – VET FEE-HELP – and
the earnest desire of politicians to solve
it. As part of that shallow media narrative,
current governments like to blame the VET
FEE-HELP fiasco on previous governments
and a small number of rogue providers.
However, as part of more than 60 articles
since 2011, this column has argued that
the VET FEE-HELP fiasco is only one of a
raft of policy blunders by governments,
particularly since the ministerial council for
VET began embracing the marketisation
of the sector in late 2008. This column has
consistently laid the blame or responsibility
for major VET debacles over the last eight
years at the feet of the policymakers who
have worked f