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.
