Gillard holds to VET education regulator plan.

[connaust]

FEDERAL Education Minister Julia Gillard will press ahead with plans for a national vocational education regulator, despite the refusal of Victoria and Western Australia to sign over their powers. The Government will legislate next year to create the regulator, which will accredit colleges, including those offering courses for international students.

 

Finally, though WA probably wants to retain control re. mining industry training etc., Victoria because they are incompetent in regulating dodgy colleges....

[Guest Gollywobbler]

Hi Andrew

 

Regulators breed like rabbits in my observation. No doubt the new Regulators (two of them at least, it would seem) will employ hundreds of people all doing very little in return for their wages and nothing of any concrete value to anything except their own pay cheques at the end of each month. The UK is equally lousy with them. It is a licence for an unelected quango to print money, I suspect.

 

The world needs another World War to knock this sort of nonsense out of the system, I tend to think......

 

Cheers

 

Gill

[Guest proud2beaussie]

Melbourne wins race for new tertiary regulator | The Australian

 

THE new tertiary regulator will call Melbourne home, following an agreement today by education ministers. The states and territories have given a formal go-ahead for the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency but its governance is still being negotiated.

In a sign of potential difficulty ahead, Western Australia and Victoria opposed a new national regulator for vocational training based on a limited referral of state law-making powers to Canberra.

That body may merge with TEQSA in 2013, according to the official communique from today's meeting of the new Ministerial Council for Tertiary Education and Employment.

Commentators argue that TEQSA may need a referral of powers to carry out its broad functions and to embrace the entire tertiary sector. Federal legislation to establish TEQSA as an independent statutory authority is expected next year.

 

[Guest wanderer]

By Gill,

The world needs another World War to knock this sort of nonsense out of the system, I tend to think......

 

Yes, these Regulators do become like little Hitlers with their Quango Empires.

I think it was in Victoria where there was a study and they found they had literally hundreds of them.

 

I suppose if we had a War Games Regulator, using Paint Balls that'd be pretty good, especially if it was possible for Citizens to attack the Quangos.

[connaust]

I actually spoke to one on email this morning, saying that everyone knew of a recent closure, "Merindian" in Sydney & Melbourne, was on the cards due to liquidity problems (there was even a public post in The Australian 6 months ago, think one of their teachers saying they were trading insolvent....).

 

While regulators prefer paper based auditing, and not talking to stakeholders or clients, e.g. teachers, students, agents etc. they will be playing catch up...

 

Again it is political, if they are going to be intrusive re. private colleges, they will have to to do the same in state system.....

[connaust]

Look what turned up in the Melbourne Age:

 

Private college system a fiasco in need of a fix

Victoria's biggest export earner faces the real prospect of collapse.

 

EVEN as the rot in international education is laid bare, the Brumby Government would like us to believe the problems with private colleges are restricted to a handful of small, fly-by-night operators. Rubbish. The recent closure of nine colleges in Melbourne and Sydney left nearly 3000 stranded foreign students clinging on to nothing more than hope.

 

The writer of this article also complained of the arrogance and obstruction from the state government and regulators some months ago. She may not be aware of big changes in visa requirements, there will probably be a big surge in visa apps before 31 December, then a real slowdown....

 

[Guest wanderer]

Wow!

As if businesses do not go down the gurglar regularly in tighter economic times and I know of no guarantee that education companies are immune from that.

 

And the connection to regulation?

You would like more?

Communist style?

 

The quality of reporting is swirling about plug holes when you read of

Known collectively as the Meridian colleges, some had been operating since 2006, and one since 1999. All were owned by Global Campus Management, which is in turn owned by the big Cayman Islands-based SinoEd Group.

These colleges were neither small, nor fly-by-night.

That is absolutely laughable and the reporter does need to look behind the scenes a little.

And many of these complaints arise from college operators putting profits ahead of education and welfare - something federal and state governments have condemned.

 

Likewise laughable for even the best of Universities are run as enterprises and run very well.

It is plain obvious that when a profit driven company runs a college, they'll be operating to a bottom line and with international organisations doing that, if their funds dry up, they dry up, an economic fact of life.

As colleges collapse, and more are predicted to close, increasing numbers of displaced students must be provided with alternative colleges or be given a refund. It is their legal entitlement.

 

and

And, in an unbelievably audacious twist, owner Catherine Carrick wants taxpayers to help bail out private colleges because they are burdened by displaced students.

 

Complete lack of logic expressed with those two quotes, though the author managed to get one line right.

and an education regulator that has the power and the will to do its job properly.

though that does not mean we will have an education police force in place and if there is to be one then on a user pay principle you could have colleges paying more and students more again in fees.

 

If people, be they students or their parents are going to consider studying, training or working anywhere, be it even their own country, there is such a thing as investigating what you may get yourself into and with studying it ought to be something like.

. What course suits my interests?

. Can I do that close to home?

. How well established is the college or whatever

2006 or even 1999 with a foreign country as against 1856 or 1896 rings alarm bells

 

SinoEd to me near infers a company either established with Sino money or a heavy Sino interest one way or another.

. So what is the backing/ownership of a company owned college.

. Is there any government backing?

. What guarantees are there with this company?

 

These are all very basic things anyone in any country would normally consider in buying any product but it's a bit Mushi to put too much faith in something so Sushi said.

 

The stories of students from peasant families etc. being sucked in by agents overseas is really something that the authorities in those overseas countries need to look at on behalf of their own people, their consumers.

 

For the students, it's a sad fact of life that be it from government investigation of dodgy businesses or larger concerns because of financial structures, failures of less creditable businesses will occur just as in any industry and just as in any industry, you step outside of mainstream providers you can expect to get problems.

 

Whilst there are various legal channels that any consumer can usually follow re quality of service, Regulators by law will have to have evidence of malpractice and evidence needs to be more than hearsay.

 

As a society Australia is not a police state when it comes to business operations in general and whilst there are criteria to be met in registering and operations compliance is more a matter of reliance on legal practices and random auditing, even with Taxation.

 

It is probably much the same way in most developed nations and even in more regulated societies such as what you may find under communism there is still rampant corruption.

 

What is the Aussie speciality in Andrew?

[connaust]

:unsure:

[Guest wanderer]

:yes: