My point is not so much that it is only Aviation education suffering this rort, but that it has affected the actual GA side of the industry in a very negative way. Making (rorting) money from education is nothing new, however in this case it destroyed the viability of a number of flying schools, one I was personally involved with. There were several quite successful independent schools that made good money from running profitable and respected ground theory courses. The TAFE system killed that income overnight, even reputation is trumped by insanely cheap.... Yes we got a few students after the TAFE system was involved, however course numbers dropped to a few each course run every 6 months if lucky. Before that courses were limited to the space, that is we ran a course when a room was available to teach it, and there were 3-4 rooms capable of that.
At least then you could truly choose to pay for ground theory or self study, now the components of the business that were covered by the ground courses, administration, utilities, rent etc all have to be covered by aircraft rental. So even if you choose to self study you are still covering the gap that was left by the loss of the ground courses.