Is government regulation sufficient?
Having held a senior leadership role in the sector at the time of the last international student crisis it was with a great sense of disappointment but no surprise that I read the details of ASQA’s latest risk priorities.
After a number of years where ASQA was focussed on the most serious risks to the sector being issues such as too much online learning and training package transitions – this year ASQA has correctly identified the very serious risk of “non-genuine providers and bad-faith operators” in their risk priorities for the next financial year.
In the 2008-2010 international student crisis (triggered in by both violence against international students and ‘non-genuine and bad-faith operators’) the sector was operating under a state-based regulatory model – with an emergent national VET regulator (the National Audit and Registration Agency) established to try and tackle the lack of national consistency in the interpretation of the then national quality standards for RTOs.
The significant flaws in the regulatory oversight of international VET providers in Victoria and New South Wales by their state regulatory bodies was a key driver in the shift from the optional emergent national regulatory model (NARA) to an (almost) fully national regulatory model in the Australian Skills Quality Authority.
Put simply the Commonwealth government realised that the two largest state regulators had missed significant examples of fraud and even criminal activity in the international education sector and a new approach was needed.
The irony that the sector now finds itself in the same position is not lost on any of us who have worked in the sector in the intervening years since the first international student crisis and who care deeply about the experiences of international students and the integrity of the Australian VET sector.
With government regulation again allowing bad faith and non-genuine providers to operate – because the regulator cannot distinguish them from quality providers – then how can anyone else distinguish the quality providers in the sector?
Some of you will have seen my support for the proposed new QVET body which is a provider-led initiative to lift quality in the sector, rather than waiting for ASQA to identify and then chase out the worst private VET providers.
I have no involvement with QVET but you can understand why I think there is a real need for what they are planning and I wish them all the very best of luck.
