How well are ASQA’s efforts to improve integrity in the VET sector working out?
Not that well at the moment – based on the evidence.
When you look at where ASQA has been focussing its attention in the last 18 months it would be fair to say that the integrity issues identified in the Nixon Review appear largely unaddressed (at least in terms of any public actions) and the public actions ASQA has taken on integrity issues seem very poorly focussed.
Here are some of what has me concerned:
- Why was ASQA focussed on discussing 23,000 cancelled VET qualifications (issued by 10 cancelled RTOs) at a recent international education agent conference… when only one of the 10 RTOs was CRICOS approved to deliver education to international students… and when the qualifications issued by that provider to their international students have not been found to have integrity issues and thus have not been cancelled?
The providers in question are listed on ASQA’s website: https://www.asqa.gov.au/students/qualification-integrity-regulatory-action
Only one of them had CRICOS approval and, as the Koala News reported, ASQA did not cancel any of the qualifications issued by this provider to their international students. Instead apparently finding they had been properly taught and assessed.
Despite this lack of evidence of any need to cancel the qualifications of any international students – ASQA thought it a productive use of their Executive Director – Integrity’s time to present to an audience of predominantly education agents at the SYMPLED2025 conference on ASQA’s efforts to cancel the qualifications of nine domestic RTOs and the domestic students of a CRICOS RTO.
I wasn’t at the conference but thanks to Rob McGowan from Torrens University’s write up (again in Koala News) we learn that, along with the Director of the Tuition Protection Service, ASQA’s representative:
“…delivered a sobering session on the rise of non-genuine providers and bad-faith operators. With over 23,000 qualifications voided due to college closures, the sector faces serious threats – from fraudulent issuance and phoenixing to criminal infiltration.
“Systemic problem requires a systematic solution.” It was recognised that these unethical and sometimes unlawful actions are resulting from a small minority but undermine the integrity of the sector and are being addressed.”
Clearly a powerful message – but totally misdirected given none of the public actions ASQA has taken to cancel qualifications so far relate to international students.
2. In separate regulatory action by ASQA – related to its concerns about academic integrity (contract cheating and undetected use by students of GenAI) – ASQA has just lost its case in the Administrative Review Tribunal.
In February this year the Sydney Morning Herald reported on ASQA’s attempts to cancel the registration of:
“One of the country’s largest training colleges has been ordered to shut down amid allegations that it failed to prevent students cheating, as part of an aggressive crackdown by the vocational education watchdog to clean up the sector.”
The provider, Entry Education, provided the SMH journalist with details of ASQA’s audit findings:
“The authority’s report said there was “significant concern” over the college’s use of online assessments, and it believed students had used AI to complete work, pointing to an example which it said appeared “too perfect” and showed indications of being an AI-generated response.”
Entry Education spoke to the journalist at the SMH and published their own statement on their website. They also challenged the decision in the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART).
Subsequently, in its April 2025 ASQA IQ update newsletter, ASQA published a range of statements about academic integrity, contract cheating and students’ potential use of GenAI. That was their first advice to the providers they regulate on this important integrity issue – despite the fact it appears to have been one of the reasons they were seeking to cancel Entry Education’s registration.
I am not aware of any further advice provided by ASQA to the sector (in webinars, statements of regulatory intent, etc) in the last six months on this critical academic integrity matter.
Last week Entry Education’s listing on the training.gov.au website was updated. When you get to the page, you need to turn on RTO history – yes, and scroll to the bottom of the summary page. There you will find two ‘details’ buttons showing the two related actions by ASQA that Entry Education was appealing (cancellation and a condition that they not enrol new students) had both been ‘set aside’ by the ART – that is, the Tribunal found in favour of Entry Education and threw out ASQA’s cancellation and conditions decisions.
3. In July I published data from the training.gov.au website showing 1 in 10 RTOs and 1 in 7 CRICOS providers are run by CEOs who use generic emails (like gmail and yahoo) to run their businesses. Despite this being a known integrity risk in the sector for 15 years it is unclear if any action has been taken by ASQA.
How much confidence would you have in someone like honey123@gmail.com running a college your son or daughter wanted to study at?
Does that kind of business practice scream “integrity?”
Clearly it does not – so why does ASQA find it acceptable to use these kinds of email addresses, for years and years, to engage with the providers they regulate? Especially after the work the VRQA did during the first international student crisis which first showed that the use of generic email addresses like these are a proven integrity risk.
4. This time last year, with the help of a few colleagues with eagle eyes, I disproved claims that ASQA’s efforts to ‘lapse’ the registration of 150 providers was a major win for integrity.
Claims were made at the time that ASQA’s efforts were cleaning up a:
“decade-long mess, shutting down ‘dormant’ registered training providers (RTOs) who have failed to show proof of delivering training for 12 months or more.
The Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) is keeping an eye on an additional 140 RTOs who have received a warning notice. They must resume quality training by the end of 2024 or face deregistration. Those who don’t resume satisfactory training will be found out and action will be taken to shut them down.
Improving integrity in the VET system means students are better placed to study at quality providers while employers can trust qualifications. This saves businesses time and money by improving the hiring process – and ensures students aren’t exploited.”
After I shone a light on the fact that so many of the ‘lapsed’ or ‘dormant’ providers were not involved in dubious practices but had merely not enrolled students for a while (eg Ausgrid as an enterprise RTO, numerous Catholic schools, etc), the report on lapsed providers, which had been published on the training.gov.au website, was removed.
That report on ‘lapsed’ providers has now been replaced by new reports available on the training.gov.au website, where lapsed providers are now simply a subset of those with ‘non-current’ registration, making it generally more difficult to monitor ASQA’s “integrity” actions with respect to these RTOs.
It is not clear from the brief summary details on the ASQA representative’s comments to the SYMPLED2025 conference – if actions against this group of providers was included in ASQA’s claims about the success of its regulatory activities to clean up integrity issues. Based on my analysis last year, if any actions against lapsed providers were being publicly portrayed as integrity measures against a group that was uniformly delivering unsatisfactory training warranting action to “shut them down” it would be untruthful.
So where does that leave us in terms of the regulator’s efforts to strengthen integrity in the sector?
- Cancelled qualifications – 10 RTOs (a number of whom are challenging the cancellation decision in the ART), nine of which are domestic and one with CRICOS approval but no international students have had their qualifications cancelled – despite the Nixon Review shining a light on abhorrent practices in a portion of the international VET sector.
- Academic integrity – one ASQA IQ update newsletter published with some dot points on the issue – but more significantly – one RTO cancellation decision on this issue thrown out by the ART.
- CEOs using generic email addresses – no publicly visible action on this known integrity issue by ASQA.
- Lapsed providers – any actions ASQA has taken since its first efforts 12 months ago are now less visible to the public – and the significance of its initial actions were overstated.
