VET fee scandal slugs taxpayers another $500m

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It was described as the “biggest public policy scandal in Australian history: the systematic rorting of the vocational education and training system (VET)”.

It was the reckless policy first introduced by the Howard Government and then expanded by the Gillard Government, which gave private VET providers virtually unregulated access to government subsidies for every student they enrolled. This incentivised the emergence of dodgy colleges and salesman to enrol as many students as they could in order to gain VET FEE HELP funding. They lured unsuspecting vulnerable victims into enrolling in over-priced, dodgy courses (often online), allowing these private VET providers to gain billions in taxpayer dollars while providing very little actual education.

The VET scandal had so far cost Australian taxpayers an estimated $7.5 billion, which includes loans that will never be repaid. And it has left swathes of rorted students owing thousands in loans for courses they never finished, or qualifications that aren’t worth the paper they are written on.

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About the author
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness. Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.