Students Beware: Even More Private Colleges Have Lost Gov Registration in NSW

About 1,000 students are thought to be affected.

There are hundreds of higher education providers across Australia but 26 of them in NSW lost their government funding last year due to performance and standards issues.

Fairfax Media is now reporting that 15 of those had been removed from the NSW Government's Smart and Skilled program for performance issues while the remaining eight were de-registered completely from Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) for a failure to meet minimum standards. In some cases, this means they can no longer continue to operate due to financial reasons.

Among the de-registered institutes were Newcastle's Advanced Careers College and Sydney's The Australian College of Vocational Studies.

Students enrolled in these institutes will now have to face paying the full amount of the course (as opposed to previously subsidised costs) or transfer to another institute, where possible.

The Minister for Skills, MP John Barilaro, said that these deregistrations were evidence that the government's rigorous system was working.

"All Smart and Skilled providers are subject to rigorous and regular monitoring against strict criteria to ensure a quality system that provides confidence to both students and employers," Mr Barilaro said.

"Where a provider's contract is terminated, full assistance is given to students to ensure they can complete their qualification."

In 2017, one of Australia's largest vocational education providers, Careers Australia, went into voluntary administration, leaving around 15,000 students uncertain about the future of their courses.

Jess Bell was one of those students who had already finished a Diploma of Counselling through the provider but was only assignments away from completing a second diploma.

"There has been nothing from Careers Australia except the text message that was sent out at 10.44pm that had little information on what was going on," Bell told us at the time.

"I had to Google [it] to find out what the text message meant."

If you've been affected by this issue or have a similar story, reach out to us at editor@studentedge.com.au. Otherwise, contact Training NSW for further questions regarding your course provider.

Header Image: iStock.com/noipornpan