Meanwhile, Ms Field said claims by Skills Minister Andrew Giles that 150 “ghost colleges” had been shut down by ASQA were over-cooked.
Last month, Mr Giles said the government was “calling time on the rorts and loopholes that have plagued the VET sector for far too long under the former Liberal and National government”.
“We’ve weeded out and shut down over 150 dormant operators, and 140 more have been given a yellow card,” Mr Giles said.
However, an examination of the list reveals many are not, in fact, dodgy colleges preying on overseas students. It includes five enterprise training organisations, including Ausgrid and DNATA Airport Services, seven industry bodies including Alzheimer’s Association of Queensland, the Australian Medical Association, and the Australian College of Nursing, 12 schools and Fiji’s highly regarded University of the South Pacific.
“They have made a decision to stop teaching vocational courses, which is why they have no students. They are not ‘ghost’ colleges, as the minister suggests,” Ms Field said.
Nice-Pumpkin-4318 on
For context, Minister Andrew Giles announced last month that 150 ‘Ghost Colleges’ and ‘Shonky Operators’ in the international VET space had been ‘closed down’. He described that this would be addressing ‘quality and assurance issues in international education’.
” Speaking to SBS, Skills Minister Andrew Giles said colleges that had not been operating for the purposes of providing quality education had been weeded out and shut down. “The Albanese government is calling time on the rorts and loopholes that have plagued the VET sector for far too long,” he said. “Under our government, there is no place for anyone who seeks to undermine the sector and exploit students.”
It’s since been revealed that only 13 of these operators were ever operating in the international student space, and none at all had any active students. Rather, these were 150 ‘lapsed’ companies that had already closed down and not traded for some time.
Operators included providers including The Australian Medical Association, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane, The Alzheimer’s Association, Australian Migrant Resource Centre, the Labor-affiliated WA Prison Officers Union of Workers, NSW Taxi Council, the Fijian government’s University of the South Pacific, 12 catholic and state high schools, and various government/charity training organisations.
Again, not a single international student has been affected by this.
Andrew Giles has deliberately misled parliament and knowingly made false statements to the media. Already sacked as Immigration Minister this year, it’s hard to see how Albanese can continue with him even in his substantially reduced Training Minister role.
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[https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/banned-colleges-allocated-thousands-of-places-under-student-caps-20240910-p5k9bq](https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/banned-colleges-allocated-thousands-of-places-under-student-caps-20240910-p5k9bq)
Meanwhile, Ms Field said claims by Skills Minister Andrew Giles that 150 “ghost colleges” had been shut down by ASQA were over-cooked.
Last month, Mr Giles said the government was “calling time on the rorts and loopholes that have plagued the VET sector for far too long under the former Liberal and National government”.
“We’ve weeded out and shut down over 150 dormant operators, and 140 more have been given a yellow card,” Mr Giles said.
However, an examination of the list reveals many are not, in fact, dodgy colleges preying on overseas students. It includes five enterprise training organisations, including Ausgrid and DNATA Airport Services, seven industry bodies including Alzheimer’s Association of Queensland, the Australian Medical Association, and the Australian College of Nursing, 12 schools and Fiji’s highly regarded University of the South Pacific.
“They have made a decision to stop teaching vocational courses, which is why they have no students. They are not ‘ghost’ colleges, as the minister suggests,” Ms Field said.
For context, Minister Andrew Giles announced last month that 150 ‘Ghost Colleges’ and ‘Shonky Operators’ in the international VET space had been ‘closed down’. He described that this would be addressing ‘quality and assurance issues in international education’.
” Speaking to SBS, Skills Minister Andrew Giles said colleges that had not been operating for the purposes of providing quality education had been weeded out and shut down. “The Albanese government is calling time on the rorts and loopholes that have plagued the VET sector for far too long,” he said. “Under our government, there is no place for anyone who seeks to undermine the sector and exploit students.”
It’s since been revealed that only 13 of these operators were ever operating in the international student space, and none at all had any active students. Rather, these were 150 ‘lapsed’ companies that had already closed down and not traded for some time.
Operators included providers including The Australian Medical Association, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane, The Alzheimer’s Association, Australian Migrant Resource Centre, the Labor-affiliated WA Prison Officers Union of Workers, NSW Taxi Council, the Fijian government’s University of the South Pacific, 12 catholic and state high schools, and various government/charity training organisations.
Again, not a single international student has been affected by this.
Andrew Giles has deliberately misled parliament and knowingly made false statements to the media. Already sacked as Immigration Minister this year, it’s hard to see how Albanese can continue with him even in his substantially reduced Training Minister role.