Reports about rorting of Australia’s private vocational educational training (VET) system seem to be never-ending.
Following in the footsteps of widespread reports last year (e.g. here, here, here and here) showing massive waste of taxpayer subsidies and the unconscionable targeting of poor areas with “free” laptops if they sign-up to expensive online courses, yet more reports have emerged of rorting within the private VET sector.
As published in the ABC yesterday morning, a whistle blower has accused Careers Australia of paying him $5,000 in hush money to keep quiet about rorting of the VET-FEE-HELP scheme:
Chris Chambers went public with concerns about the recruiting practices of Careers Australia in 2015.
At the time the former marketing agent revealed sales brokers were taking entrance exams for students it wanted to sign up to hefty student loans through the Government’s VET-FEE-HELP scheme.
However, after he went public he said the college paid him $5,000 in return for signing a confidentiality agreement.
He has broken the agreement to speak out for a second time following renewed concerns Careers Australia is continuing to sign up vulnerable students to hefty loans…
Mr Chambers said he was concerned about the practices of Careers Australia’s new internal call centres to sign up students.
“Audit these phone calls, to actually crack down on the inducements, to actually crack down on the misleading language so you take that off the doorstep,” he said. “The misleading language is still continuing over the phone”…
And yesterday evening, the ABC published another article updating court proceedings against a provider “scamming” students into courses they had no hope of completing or repaying:
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is attempting to recover $57 million in course fees paid by the Commonwealth to Unique International College.
It is alleged 3,600 people from remote areas and low socio-economic backgrounds were offered free laptops and told the course was free, when in fact they each incurred VET FEE-HELP loans of up to $25,000.
The debt would be payable if they earned more than $54,126.
In closing submissions in the Federal Court, the ACCC argued the college made false and misleading representations and engaged in deceptive and unconscionable conduct.
The court heard marketing staff went into Indigenous communities to sell the courses…
Mr O’Bryan said of the owner of the college, Amarjit Singh, who was in court to hear the submissions: “It didn’t take him long to work out he had struck gold.”
He said over the course of a year he went from having 300 students to thousands.
Prior to the Federal Election, the Turnbull Government pledged to take action against dodgy VET providers, developing a “hit list” of training courses set to lose public funding as well as setting a lower loan limit on popular courses, such as business and management.
Let’s hope that the Governement does not shirk on reforming this sector, which is riddled with waste, has produced poor educational outcomes, and blown a big hole in the Budget.
