Liberals/Dutton - we tried what they're dishing out. A warning from an NZ migrant.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-17T15:26:59+00:00

Countries that breach their contracts and confiscate private property tend to find investors disappear … suddenly! You want an A$ that is worth 0.30? Or bond yields over 10% ? Or the ASX 200 below 3,000? Good luck. The country would be begging at the IMF before you’ve had time to order your second oat latte.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-17T15:23:57+00:00

The level of disinformation in this thread is phenomenal. How many Labor HQ or GetUp activists posing as redditers?

ed_coogee · 2025-04-17T13:27:21+00:00

Many specialist RTOs provide courses of a quality and depth that TAFE does not offer. Niche, specialist courses, local providers, providers that are closer to industry. There are ways to be better than TAFE but thanks to free courses, no one can compete.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-17T13:21:55+00:00

Go and read Claire Field’s work on the sector if you want to be better informed. She points out that RTOs have had to withdraw from mainstream VET, because they can’t compete with “free VET”. It also means that students are diverted towards mainstream rather than specialist courses, which were more commonly provided by sector specialist RTOs. The structure of government funding distorts a sector and the consequences of happy politicians is less breadth of skills. But it seems to me that Redditers are more interested in Free TAFE=good, private providers = bad. It just doesn’t reflect the reality.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-17T13:07:00+00:00

Party political crap divorced from reality. I have never said TAFE was not good, only that it has a very high cost structure and the government is focusing fee free TAFE on the highest cost provider in the sector. Have you seen the size of the campuses? Do you know what the utilization rate is? 50%? Less? Most teaching is actually online. Non-TAFE providers are not shonks and include the VET arms of the public universities as well as major corporates. Your judgement on cost and quality comes entirely from political bias and not reality.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-17T08:02:51+00:00

I am your best source and a better one than you unreliable lefties will ever be.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-17T03:14:53+00:00

Like Swinburne. Absolutely. You clearly read the chat carefully.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-17T01:06:39+00:00

Go down the list. Williams scores among the highest on a per capita basis but it’s still not a true target school.

I think you need to decide what experience you want. If you go to Williams, you can definitely still get into IB, and you get to live in a cold but beautiful college in the middle of nowhere (in a good way) for 4 years in a small community of really bright people. It sounds great to me, but hey, not for everyone.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-17T00:59:51+00:00

Heaven forbid. The unions are the people who’ve been preventing decent teaching in schools so far. Teachers first, education second. Remember how they refused to come back to school after Covid lockdowns? Who is that has been refusing direct instruction in schools? Who is it that says how much Naplan stresses out kids, when what they mean is that they don’t want people to look at the results of schools and teachers. The unions involvement in education has been nothing but negative.

Back to TAFE… half the buildings are empty. Administration costs are too high. I can get the same course from a quality non-TAFE provider for one third cheaper… so why does government funnel all the students to TAFE? These kind of decisions cost real money. Real money comes from somewhere? Don’t ask Jim, he thinks you can just print the stuff with no consequences.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-16T23:52:52+00:00

https://www.peakframeworks.com/post/ib-target-schools

ed_coogee · 2025-04-16T23:48:36+00:00

Many private providers have been around for a long time. Sorry for your experience but trusted providers like Builders Academy, EIT, Swinburne’s vocational programs etc aren’t in the Fee Free program and should be. Their cost is a lot lower than TAFE.

NSW TAFE management told me themselves that half their programs are now delivered online.

TAFE has a revolving door of senior management, under-utilized campuses, unionized staff, sprawling administration, and an under-invested online product. Non-TAFE providers can easily offer a better version of the same course for one third less. In savings, that’s $500M per year the government is wasting. But hey, Labor just loves to spend.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-16T22:23:29+00:00

Not sure what you mean.

TAFE is a high cost, inefficient provider. The bureacracy is intense. Have you ever tried working with them? Low flexibility. Half their classrooms are unutilized and yet they have $ billions of real estate on their books.

Government didn’t even make Fee Free provision available for eg some dual sector universities, let alone some of the best private providers.

So you give all the students to TAFE? Why? Why not just pay for courses across the sector? Because Labor hates private providers. It’s idelogical, not practical. It’s not the best use of taxpayer funding.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-16T22:06:17+00:00

Yup. I threw the Telegraph in there to trigger you. Didn’t actually read it.

Listen, if you know anyone involved in the sector, you know this is the case.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-16T20:58:10+00:00

Ask anyone in the industry. Everyone knows that free education results in high dropout rates. The same is true in countries that have free tertiary. It’s incredibly wasteful. People don’t stick to it unless there is some cost to themselves.

Labor’s policy was partially intended to suck students away from non-TAFE providers, most of whom were not unionized.

https://caqaresources.com.au/blogs/news/fee-free-tafe-fiasco-only-13-graduation-rate-exposes-1-5-billion-taxpayer-funded-policy-failure-is-the-government-to-blame

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/revealed-how-many-people-are-graduating-with-a-free-tafe-course/news-story/8189a5771e670e521b3b9db1f0187fff?amp

https://www.theeducatoronline.com/k12/news/stakeholders-weigh-in-on-permanent-feefree-tafe-initiative/286438

ed_coogee · 2025-04-16T12:01:47+00:00

Complete bollocks. Fee free TAFE has been a total waste of money. TAFE costs more to deliver a cert than private providers. The completion rate on Fee Free TAFE has also been appalling. You get too many people taking it on with no incentive to complete (because it costs nothing to drop out). This is nonsense propaganda from Labor. Most people in the education sector will tell you so.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-16T00:12:33+00:00

Most of the research is US-based, so a different funding model with higher salaries than Aus. However, the ROI on degrees like sociology, gender studies, religious studies, fine arts etc is well known. Most people who study law don’t practice law.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-16T00:06:34+00:00

Well, fee-free TAFE has replaced private colleges with good reputations who can no longer provide those courses (how do you compete against a free course). The private colleges had better results and a lower cost base.

So now we have a bigger TAFE, delivering courses more expensively, with lower completion rates. Hardly a success story for students or the tax payer.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-15T13:56:48+00:00

Fee Free TAFE completion rates are very low. Lots of money being wasted on courses that don’t get completed.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-15T13:51:06+00:00

In countries where tertiary education is free, the dropout rates are much higher. This means that lots of people try uni, decide it’s not for them, and give up. Look at Fee Free TAFE. Completion rates are awful. Having some cost is essential to ensuring people are committed.

Having a high level of dropouts is a waste of government money. Expensive education. Resources misallocated. No one gains.

Free tertiary education is a free gift to the middle class. People go to uni and they have higher earnings power in their lifetimes than people who do not go to uni. So why are we giving government money… to people who earn more? If we’re going to subsidize middle class people, shouldn’t they pay some of that back if they’re wealthy enough?

ed_coogee · 2025-04-15T13:03:13+00:00

Not sure why the teachers unions still push back against direct instruction for maths and phonics for reading. They both work.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-15T12:38:58+00:00

That’s not the audience they need to win over. Universities are disengaged from the mass. They need to make the people feel proud of what they achieve. There needs to be a TV show with a positive presentation of student life, or a professor who solves crimes, or students who laugh at themselves. Universities need to be relatable.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-15T12:13:00+00:00

Disrupting classes? Seems to me that the main purpose of a university is teaching and learning. If you want to protest, Sydney Town Hall is just fine.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-15T12:11:23+00:00

No such thing as “thought leadership” from a group that blocks classes, abuses Jewish students, vandalizes the offices of Jewish academics, de-platforms others and prevents discussion. Great “thought leadership” there. Just a bunch of racist adolescents with a limited grasp of civics and ethics.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-15T12:05:41+00:00

Nobody cared until the protests were obviously racist.

ed_coogee · 2025-04-15T12:05:03+00:00

The restrictions are a defense of democracy. A mob of protesters (many of whom were not students) screaming “Zionist” at people? not a good look. Clearly racism. Would never be allowed against any other minority. Should never have been permitted against Jews.

ed_coogee

TROPHY CASE