Private colleges preying on the vulnerable

Dodgy private colleges are making massive profits, while the public TAFE system is being decimated by deregulation and funding cuts.

A study commissioned by the Australian Education Union estimates that, between 2013 and 2014, Victoria’s TAFEs lost 50,000 students and the losses have continued this year. In NSW, the July state budget estimated a loss of 83,000 students.

Private colleges are reaping the rewards and targeting vulnerable students in the process.

Arthur and Jacinda Eastham, who both have intellectual disabilities, were offered laptops and qualifications despite struggling with the literacy and numeracy test. The couple say that they were signed up by a salesman commissioned by the Phoenix Institute in Melbourne, who had door-knocked the housing estates of Euroa in Victoria.

“He let himself in and then he told me to do a course”, Jacinda told Fairfax journalists Henrietta Cook and Michael Bachelard.

Just months ago, the institute was found to have offered prospective students free laptops for degrees they were unlikely to complete. Phoenix receives $18,000 in government funding per student.

Leaked documents provide evidence that one private provider, Unique International College, has been coercing disabled and illiterate students into taking hefty loans – up to $25,000 – in exchange for $2,000 in cash and a degree course that they will be unable to complete.

Another college, Evocca, is facing a class action suit from former students, who claim they were provided with a subpar education and were misled by the college’s advertising.

Evocca received more than $400 million in federal government funding in 2012-14.

Federal education minister Simon Birmingham told Fairfax that the scheme is “structured in a way that made it susceptible to shonks and fraudsters”.

Yet such is the government’s commitment to a business model of education that no plans to repeal the deregulation of vocational education have been forthcoming.