It is costing taxpayers on average seven times more to educate a student at a private vocational college than a public TAFE, according to new analysis of federal government figures.
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Taxpayers forked out $73,200 per graduate from private colleges on average, but only $10,500 per graduate in TAFE courses in 2014, two years after the Gillard government paved the way to marketise vocational training.
The analysis, done by the NSW Greens based on the federal Department of Education and Training's funding figures and the number of vocational graduates in 2014, comes in the wake of several scandals in the private vocational sector in which dodgy providers have been exposed allegedly recruiting vulnerable people into government-funded courses they had little hope of completing by giving them laptops or iPads.
The cost blowout is in part because despite deep funding cuts, TAFE maintained significantly higher completion rates than private colleges in 2014 (87 per cent compared with 44 per cent for private providers).
NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge said the privatisation of vocational training "has been a comprehensive failure" that both major parties shared responsibility for.
"In a tight fiscal environment it is criminal to see billions of tax dollars being squandered to prop up private providers who aren't even giving their students a qualification.
“The whole system needs to be scrapped and all government funding for vocational education and training returned to the public sector."
The federal Minister for Vocational Education and Skills, Senator Scott Ryan, said "the Coalition has put in place more than a dozen measures to stop the most egregious and unethical practices”.
In NSW, the Smart and Skilled quality framework has prevented the worst rorts of the scandal-plagued federal system.
Prue Car, the state opposition spokeswoman for skills, said she had introduced a private member's bill to restrict public money going into the private market and to guarantee funding for TAFE NSW.
"Every other week we see an unscrupulous private training provider going to the wall – leaving students in the lurch and often forcing TAFE to pick up the pieces.”
The full story Private vocational courses cost taxpayers seven times as much as TAFE, first appeared on The Sydney Morning Herald.
