The way that the government introduced the fee assistance programs to make flying cheaper has done more damage to GA than it has helped. Cheap TAFE courses, VET through money hungry tertiary providers, has all undercut what little margins the honest hard working flying schools were making. The end result is millions of dollars of wasted tax payer funds on many candidates that should never have been there in the first place. I do understand that a few actual pilots have benefited from these subsidies, but overall it seems more that many individuals have become rich from pocketing the moneys and leaving non suited candidates and the tax payer with huge debts. Yes some flying schools adapted, but especially the TAFE run cheap theory really took margins away from some good theory providers. I made some good coin off theory tuition before the mass offerings from TAFE, after that it was marginal at best to offer a proper course that thoroughly covered the subject matter and get paid for the hours you have to put in. It all leads to mass produced courses that scrape content and focus on pass rate with repetition of exam questions.