State Government puts TAFE fees up 9 per cent

By Diane Hague

The State Government has announced a nine per cent fee increase for TAFE Advanced Diploma, Diploma, Certificate and short courses for 2008.

There is no justification for it as it is much higher than cost of living increases.

Education and Training Minister John Della Bosca's explanation that the increase was necessary to ensure that students had access to the latest technology and facilities was appalling. It is the Government's responsibility to ensure that the facilities and technology available to students at TAFE are of the highest quality and upgraded regularly.

In 2006 TAFE Futures Inquiry chair Dr Peter Kell reported many TAFE students were living in poverty and found great difficulty in meeting the costs of education and associated expenses of food, transport, accommodation and childcare. The Government is offloading its responsibility to students who are already struggling. Dr Kell also reported the significant underinvestment in TAFE at both state and federal levels in a time of a widely acknowledged skills crisis across Australia. It won't help the skills crisis to impose further fees on TAFE students.

Certain course exemptions will remain for the most disadvantaged students, that is Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and students receiving a disability benefit. However, other benefit holders will now have a $50 fee where now they are also exempt from course fees. That is particularly mean of the Government.

In the last few years, there has also been a massive increase in the number of courses that have been commercialised in TAFE with exorbitant fees attached. Federation is aware, for example, of a student in the Hunter Institute who paid $10,000 to complete a hairdressing trade course.

TAFE has now posted a new Commercial Services Policy and Guidelines. It not only proposes a raft of additional courses to be made commercial but deregulates the process by which this can occur. The commercial only offerings are to be Associate Degrees, Graduate Certificates, Graduate Diplomas; courses that target professional and career development that are not entry level qualifications (including courses that are required to meet licensing, registration with a professional body, or regulatory requirements; that is post-trade courses); all language courses except for English for Speakers of Other Language and Indigenous language; post basic medical update courses and other courses as agreed by Institutes (including Certificate IV in Training and Assessment).

Such a list begs the question: where will this commercialisation end? One definitely gets the feeling that if HECS was proposed for TAFE by a Federal Government, there wouldn't be much opposition from this State Government. But user pays is not the way that TAFE should be going. Both state and federal governments should be significantly increasing investment in TAFE if they are serious about the skills crisis facing Australia.

Diane Hague is the Administration Officer (Media and Communications).

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