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Blanket increase for tertiary education providers will undermine attempts to recruit candidates to the profession.
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Fee rise will cripple our grad program: internal audit body
18 October 2022
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The introduction of set fees for education providers regardless of their size by the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) could see smaller specialist educators disappear, says an internal audit specialist.
CEO of the Institute of Internal Auditors Australia Peter Jones said the blanket fee increase could make its unique graduate certificate unviable at a time of desperate skill shortages.
“Many of our member organisations — like so many industries — are already struggling to fill positions and attracting new people into the profession is of critical importance, given the important role internal plays in governance, risk, and compliance,” said Mr Jones.
“For us, the fee increase will result in an estimated best case scenario of almost $1,000 increase per student in fees.”
“While this may not be viewed as a significant increase, this is in an environment of high inflation and low wage growth. It creates further impediments for students, employers and the education providers who deliver specialist education like ours.”
Mr Jones said the government should instead invest in higher education so institutions like his could continue to upskill people and increase workplace participation, rather than make it harder to find appropriately qualified staff.
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“Given we have no government funding, it may mean it will no longer be commercially viable for us to offer the course, which is currently delivered on a breakeven basis,” he said.
“We believe there will be many other smaller and not for profit education providers who will be similarly impacted.”
CEO of Independent Higher Education Australia (IHEA) Dr Peter Hendy agreed with Mr Jones and said while the change would not impact larger universities, smaller independent tertiary education providers would suffer.
“IHEA is concerned about the imposition of set fees on providers irrespective of their size,” he said.
“Large public universities, who as a rule are billion-dollar organisations, can absorb these costs — but non-scalable set fees are a heavy blow on niche independent providers and their small student cohorts.”
“The Australian community should be concerned because these additional costs will be unavoidably passed onto students and their hard-working families, either partially or in full.”
Dr Hendy said his organisation would continue to promote scalable fees based on size, but the outcome of greater fees needed to be increased execution by the TEQSA.
“With the significant increase in fees being imposed on the independent sector it is imperative that TEQSA performs its functions with efficiency, accountability, and transparency in a timely manner,” said Dr Hendy.
“Over the course of the last few years TEQSA has fallen short of sectoral performance expectations on various occasions.”
“IHEA will continue to advocate for scalable fees based on provider size and a service obligation charter from TEQSA.”
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