VET-FEE Help - gooooone from 1 Jan
 

As per this link New VET Student Loans a win-win for students and taxpayers > Senator Simon Birmingham, Liberal Senator for South Australia

Replaced with VET Student Loans, capped at $15,000 a year.

Might make a further small dent to pilot numbers :ugh:

Vocational loans scheme scrapped, loans to be capped under major Turnbull government shake-up

Best thing I've read in a long time. I was wondering when the music would stop on this Ponzi scheme.

It went from $320 million to over $2 billion in just a few years? I would love to know the statistics on how much was consumed by the flight training sector. At $92k per person it must have been the biggest loan out there

Best news I have heard for a long time!

VET FEE help has hurt my business for many years.

Maybe now students will consider the cost/quality of various schools without the fog of "free money"

Agreed 100%. I'd say a fair chunk of those who undertook the loans for flying (not all) were told by these flying schools that there will be a world wide pilot shortage in the years to come. Yes, it may be true but majority of the pilot shortages will be over in Asia/Middle East, not here where there are pilots waiting for a year plus for a start out bush flying banged up pistons. Doesn't help when CAsA is killing the industry.

Heard on the grapevine that a few graduates over the last few years haven't even pursued their career in flying, which means we taxpayers will be footing the $100,000 bill per student.

Great news, hopefully we will see the end of the over inflated prices some of the larger schools are charging.

Come on folks, this will hurt the Aviation industry. I'll be the first to put my hand up and say that in the past I've seen a lot of money wasted on people who just wanted to be "Pilots" but never really thought about it due to the ease of entry, but there are a lot of colleges and institutions out there that have invested large amounts of money to gain VET-FEE accreditation and all of that is about to go down the drain.

This won't be good for the industry, the smaller companies out there might get some minor benefits but all in the all, the number of Pilots undertaking training will likely drop, Flying Schools will see more of their money that they've invested gone to waste and thusly we'll see more companies go under as they decide it's no longer worth it or no longer possible for them to survive.

This is great news to tighten the belt and stop people from taking advantage as has happened in the past, we've all no doubt heard about "Colleges" signing up students who don't undertake courses and thusly pocketing the money which is bad for the Tax Payer, but their shenanigans will now hurt our Industry I believe.

Do you think students currently enrolled will be able to finish?

It has created a very uneven playing field in the flying training industry and it seems many of the schools who were able to take advantage of it have nevertheless gone down the drain making you wonder where all that money went. Was there a shortage of new pilots before it came along and if so the has this scheme helped in any way? No and no.

There will be a couple of things happen. Flight instructors at these schools will lose their jobs. VET FEE funding allowed the schools that had it to plan ahead, they knew what their cashflow was and could plan accordingly, that included hiring instructors full time not part time or casual.

If you did any research, you will find there are schools with VET FEE courses well below the $92k being quoted. 27% below that in fact. But hey, facts and a good story shall never meet?

The fact that some students never enter the industry, let alone finish their degrees: lawyers, doctors, accountants, engineers, can you think of any of these professions guaranteed jobs?

For supposedly intelligent people you miss quite a few factors in the pilot employment scheme of things. For every pilot that leaves Australia to fill an overseas job (where most of the shortage occurs), a local pilot will be employed, everyone moves up the food chain. Despite the fact that some of the kids doing these courses have no problems moving to Indo, Africa etc for jobs or may have the right to work overseas.

But once again, lets slag someone else in the industry who may have been doing well.

I know one fee-help school that tells prospective students exactly what it's like out there, how tough it is to land your first job, so lump them all into one basket if that rocks your boat.

One thing that is a fact is the spectacular fail of government policy in this area. It blew out to 2. whatever billion because of the useless courses that government allowed onto the scheme, once again blame the good operators brought down by a couple of high profile schonks.

One thing GA can rejoice in, and it's good at this, is the inevitable failure of some of the schools that used this scheme. Rejoice in the failure of your brothers and sisters, their lost jobs, the lost investment in new and refurbished aircraft, the local hardware that sold 70k of building materials, the extra full time jobs and part time jobs in a struggling small town, the local LAME getting a bit of extra work.

Well done GA :D appreciate your support :ok:

4 of my close friends who I trained with just told that there job will end with there current employer because of this, expect a mass sacking of instructors to come.

Sad as it is that instructors will lose their employment, and yes I do have sympathy for them, any business that depends on government handouts is a bad 'business model'

Well there goes my opportunity to become a pilot, I have fought so hard for this having a slight CVD and now it's all gone down the drain, coming from a single parent family there is no way I can afford to pay up-front. I was going to join one of the real providers who charged comparable costs to local schools around $60,000.

This needed to happen.

If you've seen the stats on how many people never repay their HECS/HELP debt, you realise we're all being taken for a ride.

I support a HECS program, but I don't support a huge number of people swanning through life and never paying it off.

Well said

This isn't an aviation issue, aviation wasn't the cause of why the funding model has changed and Aviation has hardly flogging this to death ... people will lose jobs here, people wont be able to pursue their wish to fly (but sure they can still go to University and enrol in endless degrees (government pays for) and still not get a job at the end of it

I mean flying schools could invest in new aircraft, new facilities, new staff - but sure the 1977 Cessna 172M has been going strong (and it's "sids compliant") - why would anyone want to invest in new equipment.

I thought this forum was to be supporting Aviation?

For those who cry poor that they didnt have VET-FEE HELP, will this your issue - like it or not, being a RTO does improve the EDUCATION standards you provide, and like it or not, training someone to fly is an Education issue, and it shouldnt be a CASA issue. I'm struggling to think of any other industry where the regulator controls the education of new comers... but of course it's aviation, we know best... :yuk:

The worst part is that I know for a fact labor had a plan to allow high-cost courses such as aviation be assessed on a provider basis. This also means that even a tafe degree in nursing or childcare will have a upfront cost.

Why does everyone feel the need to pay up front for their flight training. Around 90% (perhaps more) of the 1500 pilots at the airline I work at paid for their training by having a full time job outside of aviation and paid as they flew ie once a week. Some saved for 12 months and then do a bunch of flying during their holidays. That was the norm 28 years ago when I started flying.

Back then there were only a handful of flying schools in Australia running the full time, zero hours to CPL (IR) type training and most of these schools focused on training pilots from overseas. However there were a lot of schools that offered partime/pay as you go CPL/IR/Instructor training and they were just as busy (if not more ) than the schools offering full time training.

It took me 3 years to get my CPL and instructor rating by paying as I flew as well as holding down a full time job. It then took we another 3 years of instructing (only paid as a casual) before I got my first twin IFR job and another 4 years before my first airline (regional) job. So it took me 10 years to finally make it to the airlines and yes it was hard work and at times I thought about throwing it in, but all I ever wanted to do was fly so I stuck with it and didn't need any goverment loans.

log0008, I also came from a single parent family.

Ok guys so I just contacted Senator Birmingham and got the following reply:

"The list of courses eligible for support through VET Student Loans will be available in the near future, but we recognise that some courses, such as aviation, may need exemptions from our three cap levels as they have very high costs."

While its only a 'may' right now it's nice for a member of parliament to at least acknowledge that the aviation industry exists considering its bungling of CASA.

What I would like to see is tighter control on costs, right now Bunbury flying school and RVAC both offer VET-FEE-HELP courses for 0-150 hours for around the 60k mark, about what you would pay if you were funding your training on your own, yet some place scamming people of 90k plus. Then the UNI's charging 100k plus.

You have until the end of 2017 to finish the course

I received the same sort of response from the Minister. I would imagine that some courses, hopefully Aviation will have to be exempt as you simply cannot deliver the course for under $15,000. As the Minister said this policy is about stamping out the over priced, useless courses and cleaning up the industry. I don't think aviation falls into either one of those categories. Sure we may see some minor changes in course costs to reflect reality, however I'm hopeful of a positive solution.

The market will adjust back to supply and demand. If people think the government should subsidise GA training then let's talk about that, but it should be available across the board and not going directly into the pockets of an elite few.