high costs of multiple regulators

Do delays in establishing the national regulator matter, asks John Mitchell.

ACPET thanks John Mitchell and Campus Review for permitting us to reproduce this article.

There are some differences between the states about how to regulate training providers and these differences ultimately add to the providers’ costs. Just one of many differences cited by Dr George Brown, Group Academic Director of Think: Education Group, is that “Queensland will allow us to nest qualifications and New South Wales won’t”.

“We’re delivering the same course in both states, we have the qualification on our scope of registration, but we need to construct our training and assessment strategies differently because of this nesting in Queensland.”

Brown is acutely aware of these different approaches to regulation because he works for one of the growing number of registered training organisations that work across state borders. Think owns nine colleges such as Billy Blue College of Design and Australasian College of Natural Therapies and is progressively expanding the number of campuses of many of the colleges.

Another difference between regulators he cites is that providers can do some things in Victoria they can’t do elsewhere. “If your primary jurisdiction is Victoria you get the benefit of being in a reformed state so you don’t have to have credit transfer agreements for VET Fee Help enabled courses, whereas in other states you do. There’s also the capacity to tap into the Victorian skills funding.”

These differences between states impact on his organisation. “Look, we’re in business. To be quite frank this situation is an impediment to our business. We want to invest significantly in other states but we meet obstacles.

“CRICOS is just another example of different interpretations of legislation. Because the legislation is written fairly broadly there are sometimes different interpretations by separate states of a simple term in the legislation.”

Brown believes it is urgent that the national regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA), is established quickly to address such issues, and he is concerned that it will be delayed.

“There’s an immediate need to establish TEQSA to bring all these issues to the fore and have some logical approach. It was supposed to be launched in January next year but I believe there’s been another delay of six months.”

He is also disappointed that the national VET regulator, the National Audit and Registration Authority (NARA), was sidelined. “NARA had the best of intentions and could have been a fantastic model for the VET sector. It was moving in the right track however it was just stymied by this state versus commonwealth challenge we face.”

“It begs the question in this day and age of transnational education, cross border delivery and technology for online delivery, how can we still be reliant on such antiquated legislation? It may have served us well in the pioneering years of trying to manage locally, but serious questions now need to be asked about the fundamental basis of our legislation.

“I’m a great believer in regulation and we need to regulate in order to get rid of the poor providers, but it needs to be fair and equitable and allow those that want to excel to excel. What we have is insane.”

Benefit of complexity

Brown is concerned with the proposal to operate separate regulators for VET and higher education until 2013. “Even to entertain that thought flies in the face of the concept of a tertiary sector which was the government’s mandate and such an important thing.”

On the other hand, Brown is mindful that a single regulator for the tertiary sector cannot succeed until some differences between the sectors are addressed.

“There are still some philosophical divides between VET and higher education that need to be resolved. There are real cultural differences between the two sectors and that needs to be addressed. Tackling them head-on under TEQSA conceptually has some merits, but unfortunately I don’t think that will work.”

For Brown, an accidental benefit of this complex regulatory environment, and the high costs of working in it, is that small providers with inadequate quality systems cannot afford to remain in the industry.

As examples of large providers who are looking to expand, he points to the huge USA-based corporate operator Laureate. “There are also rumours of a private university being created in Brisbane”.

“There’s a lot of consolidation happening in the private sector. There are not a lot of brand new players. Small players struggle to exist in this market on their own: the costs of compliance are just too much for the small provider. Operating in the new environment is about economies of scale.”

Contact gbrown [at] think [dot] edu [dot] au (George Brown)

Dr John Mitchell is a member of the academic board of Think: Education Group.