Extend Vocational Education Reforms to Australian Universities?

Reforms to the Australian Vocational education and Training  (VET) Student Loans program will come into effect on 1 January 2017. These will:

• "limit eligibility to courses to those that align with industry needs and have a high likelihood of leading to employment opportunities
• cap loans at $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000 to reflect the cost of delivery (with higher caps for courses with high delivery costs such as aviation)
• require students to regularly engage with the VET Student Loans online portal to ensure they are active and their enrolments are legitimate 
• set a much higher bar for providers to enter the program, with a new application process to assess providers’ relationships with industry, student completion rates, employment outcomes, and their track record as education institutions
• strengthen legislative, compliance and payment conditions, including increased powers to suspend poor performing providers from the program, cancel their payments and revoke their approval
• ban brokers, cold-calling, providers using third party lists to contact students, or incentive-based sales tactics
• limit the subcontracting of training to stop providers ‘selling access’ to higher-fee loans arrangements to training organisations that don’t meet the higher bar to qualify."

From "Stronger vocational education system delivered", Simon Birmingham, Minister for Education and Training, 1 December 2016

It will be interesting to see if the government brings in similar reforms for the university sector, which has its own loans scheme on which the failed VET scheme was based. While there is not the same level of misuse of the university scheme apparent, there is currently no requirement for university programs to align with industry need. If students were also required to undertake Higher Education in smaller increments (first a month long VET Cert IV, then a six month university Certificate, followed by university programs each of no more than two years) these measures would reduce cost and boost completion rates.

Victorian VET Funding Review

A Victorian VET Funding Review by Bruce Mackenzie and Neil Coulson, was released September 2015 (incorrectly dated February 2016 on the Victorian Government website). The report had as its first recommendation:

"1) That the Victorian Government work with the Commonwealth Government to consider the applicability of reforms to the fee-for-service and VET FEE-HELP markets."

However, a major failing of the report is that it diplomatically skirts around the way the flaws in the design of the Commonwealth's VET FEE-HELP scheme has distorted the VET market, wasted public money and damaged the reputation of Australian Higher Education.

The report recommends keeping additional funding for regional training:

"12) That the Government maintain a rural and regional loading to reflect the relatively higher costs involved in rural and regional training provision."

But the report fails to consider the value of on-line training to provide access for regional student, as well as those with work or family commitments, which prevent regular campus attendance.

The report proposes that the student contribution increase the higher the level of qualification:

"18) That the Government adopt the principle that the student contribution increase the higher the level of qualification."

It is not clear why the student contribution should increase with level of qualification. In fact there is no clear explanation in the report as to why VET courses should be subsidized for students who can afford to pay. There is a case for subsidizing courses where there is a shortage of skills and for students on low incomes.

The report recommends limiting Recognition of Prior Learning to 40%:

"36) That the Government limit RPL to no more than 40 per cent of the course volume."

This would have caused me problems, when I obtained 80% of a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment by RPL. I already had a Graduate Certificate in Higher Eduction and years of experience teaching at a university and an award from industry for course design. It would have been frustrating to sit in classes on something I could already do.