Australian caps will bankrupt ‘good’ colleges, senators warned

Proposed international enrolment caps for Australian vocational colleges are so flawed that the government should restart the whole process, according to a former regulator.

Consultant Claire Field said “anomalies” in the proposed quotas included the allocation of more than 1,400 places to 12 colleges currently fighting moves to have them deregistered.

One had been authorised to admit more overseas students than TAFE NSW, the biggest training provider in Australia.

Another 10 colleges had been awarded places for more foreign vocational students than they were allowed to host under the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students (Cricos), including four that delivered nominally six- or 12-month certificate courses in just one or two months.

Ms Field said 79 colleges that had not taught any foreign vocational students in at least five years had been awarded default caps for 30 students each. Meanwhile, 192 institutions with recent international enrolments had been given caps for 10 students or fewer.

She said that if the caps proceeded as proposed, “quite a large number” of private vocational colleges would be forced to close. “They’re probably not poor quality,” she told the Senate’s education and employment committee, which is examining legislation to introduce the caps.

Ms Field launched and managed the National Audit and Registration Agency, which regulated training colleges operating across state and territory borders between 2008 and 2011. She blamed the anomalies on a loss of expertise following the 2022 separation of training from the federal government’s education portfolio.

“I can’t believe it’s intentional,” she told the committee. “It would be wrong to go ahead like this, in my view.”

Training minister Andrew Giles disputed similar claims during a conference on 26 September. “Some of the issues that have appeared to be anomalies have not proven to be such,” he told the THE Campus Live ANZ event. “For example, Cricos and caps are not quite the same thing.”

Mr Giles said his door was “always open” and both he and his department were continuing discussions with colleges. “What we’ve tried to do is engage providers as early as possible. This is about providing certainty and sustainability, [which] is not what we’ve seen post-Covid.”

The Senate committee heard that colleges faced bankruptcy and their principals were experiencing mental health issues. Troy Williams, chief executive of the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia, said the son of one proprietor had phoned “asking what was wrong with his dad”.

“The business has been around 30 years,” Mr Williams told the committee. “They’ll walk away with virtually nothing. Bad colleges go the way of the dodo – we’re perfectly comfortable with that – [but] a lot of good providers [have] been given caps that aren’t sustainable.”

TAFE Directors Australia, which represents public training colleges or TAFEs, indicated its “strong support” for the bill despite “some differences” among its members over the way the caps had been calculated.

“It is not rushed legislation,” chief executive Jenny Dodd told the committee. “While there may be issues in some aspects of it, the overarching purpose of what it’s trying to achieve is about improving integrity.”

The proposed caps for public colleges would permit them to recruit as many international students as they admitted in 2023, while most private colleges would be allowed fewer.

The committee is due to report on 8 October.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com