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.

Government to scrap VET-FEE HELP
 

Good or bad? :rolleyes:

-young pilot hopeful but wary

That's how I did it, but a bit more recently. You were ballsy if you paid up-front. Maybe things are different now, but good luck trying to get that cash back if the flight school shut their doors.

Not telling anyone how to suck eggs, of course.

Any flight school could have had access to the scheme. Invest the money in the required approvals, invest money in developing a compliant Diploma. Comply with VRQA legislation and requirements, invest in becoming an RTO, invest in RTO compliance and it all could have been yours. Or sit on the sideline complaining about an unfair advantage.

That's not entirely fair Porter, the outlay required would be beyond a lot of smaller schools, I don't believe there is a scale of cost that depends on the size of your school, I'd say it's fairly standard for them all and some just would not be big enough to be able to outlay that kind of cash nor would there be enough business of some to be able to justify it.

It is nice that some of the smaller schools may do a bit better out of this, but overall Aviation will lose out.

That's tue Ixixly, some smaller schools don't want to invest all that money and do bulk training with all the problems that brings. It didn't seem to do much good in the longer term to those who did do it...I wouldn't call bankruptcy an advantage. I'm still standing but there are schools here that did it that are now a distant memory and that didn't do anyone in the industry any good, particularly their hard working staff. Not all students want to or can do it that way either.
If the government wants to subsidise flying training then it should be available to all schools and students alike, whatever their circumstances. And it shouldn't be in the form of big wads of cash but say something like a fuel subsidy, or perhaps the feds could do something about the people who got the airport leases sending costs through the roof.

Ix and Clare, it could have been available to smaller schools with an arrangement with a larger school. Not all of the larger schools are a-holes, some of them are more than happy to discuss these arrangements.

The problem I had with the whole system is there was no barrier to entry. One poster stated that plenty of doctors and lawyers start degrees and don't finish so how is aviation different? Well to get into those types of couses you need excellent school results. Some people I met at flying schools struggled to do basic mathematics and had trouble grasping how an aileron worked.
Before you start racking up tens of thousands of dollars of debt maybe there should be some sort of standard you have to meet before starting?

Pilotchute,

VET FEE HELP was being tracked, if an organisation had unacceptable pass rates you were at risk of losing it (it's a pity incompetent government wasn't on top of this). Whilst there may have been schools exploiting this factor, it's just not in your interest to rort it, you will get found out sooner or later. The unfortunate part of this is that the organisation clearly to blame for this mess (both incompetent federal governments) should have been all over this like a rash. It's just not that hard to audit.

TNIP, you make it look as if every school wanted a slice of this pie! Some schools just aren't interested in that kind of training. I most certainly wasn't. Especially when talking to colleagues about the attitudes of some of the students who had got the "free" money and now wanted the effortless CPL. I'd rather teach people who have gone out and earned it themselves.

The only involvement I have ever had or ever wanted in that kind of bulk training is to cross hire my aircraft to people who were doing it, COD only as it was only a matter of time before the administrators moved in.

So Tnip, don't assume that anyone who wasn't doing it was "sitting on the sidelines complaining" far from it, but it DID create a very uneven playing field in the full time Integrated CPL market (training I don't do) and it DID lead to an unrealistic market which is now coming crashing down and will mean the loss of jobs - again - for a lot of good people.

Where did all that money go?

Clare, I did all of my flight training the 'old way' but it's probably taken a good 7 or 8 years (calendar, not full time). Would I personally do it the FEE-HELP way? Probably not, but that's just me. Some people want access to a quicker way of doing it, their choice.

As far as the 'attitudes' go, 100% honest, yes it is tough to get through to some of them. But if you don't paint a bull**** picture in the first place it makes the job a little easier. Not all FEE-HELP schools are sausage factories.

A full time, integrated school without FEE-HELP can compete, the good ones do, I know one of them at Moorabbin that I'm mates with, they're in a different market to us but they're surviving. We'd all like to do a little better of course!

Where did all the money go? I'll put any of our courses up for audit to any bonafide aviation person on here. I can tell you exactly where the money has gone: Aircraft refurbishments, building renovations, 2 part time maintenance people, 2 additional full time instructors, 2 additional part time instructors (advertising for more).

As far as the failures go, I reckon you and I could pick the ones that are going to go down, all you had to do was look at the management structure, too many chiefs with too many fancy titles. Personally, any government or education department official is welcome to audit our organisation.

For an aviation stand point i think that what we need to look at is ensuring that the people using VET-FEE-HELP are passionate people who really want to be in this industry. Maybe we need to have an entrance exam, or require students to self-study up to RPL level and have a few hours in an aircraft to ensure that these people are committed and just want the financial assistance. Personally i funded myself upto CPL but used VET-FEE-HELP to get an instructors rating right away. Even having the students paying the first 5-10k is better than only covering the first 15k in my opinion, ensure that its not just free money. I also say if you don't have a good reason you have to start paying it back within 5 years your paying it back, same goes for uni students, some people these days just do courses with no intent of being employed in the field then go on a do another.

Once you've put down the violin, did you ever stop to consider the numerous negative impacts this scheme generated from schools that used Vet Fee Help income to subsidise unsustainable bids on charter contracts? Which undermined the GA industry around them? No different to scumbag operators crewing with paid ICUS.

I'm sorry if legitimate businesses hedged their entire source of income on this cash cow, but all the long standing small schools that got sunk because they did not, or could not offer vet fee help training won't be sorry to see it go. Nor will the charter companies that got undercut by it either.

TNIP, I agree, schools such as The Aeroplane Company and ACFT were both great schools with excellent instructors, not sausage factories at all; the reasons they are no longer here are probably only really known by the directors but the common denominator was this kind of training. Personally I preferred to just cross hire aircraft to them and not get involved in the training side, I'm close to retirement and don't want to start some big new project now. Similarly I did look into doing JAR training about 15 years ago as I had the qualifications but it was just too much hassle for too little return...the amount of hours I would have to fly just to pay for the auditors simply wasn't worth it. Life is too short for all that paperwork :) and if it is at the whim of a Minister, as this Fee-Help thing is, then it is far too precarious a basket to put all the eggs in!

With respect to "The name is porter" (and I do mean the respect part) I think you are talking from the position of someone who has relied on government funding NOT market forces.

If your training is as good as you say you will survive like the rest of us

I would strongly suspect that students will not be in a rush to do a $25,000 instructor rating when they could do a $15,000 one...

We have not hedged our entire source of income on VET FEE HELP. It is not the cash cow that you think it is. Well, not for us it's not. We have continued the traditional training pathways for those who don't want VET FEE HELP access. We are happy to run students through the pro's and cons of both pathways.

We offer courses outside of this scheme, for recreational and PPL's etc. We'll survive this because we're not stupid enough to put all of our eggs in one basket. :ok:

Absolutely, the customer can see 2 different products and they are free to choose between them.

The VET scheme is allowing aspiring pilots the chance to gain their licence quickly and at a lower age. We all know that airlines want 24 year olds with 45 year of experience. When recently asked to provide input to government on the VET scheme my organisation suggested that a simple way to police the scheme would be regular reporting on students enrolled and Diploma's issued. Only an out of control system could pay any educator millions and see hardly any qualifications issued. Pass rates are important which means entry assesments are vital. The minister should immediately call for reporting from all sectors on course cost, pass rates, award pay rates for the qualification .
After all a person who does a make up and nail decoration course is unlikely to ever repay the debt. I would think that a lowly 2nd officer with any of the airlines would certainly be in the income bracket to repay their debt.
Government needs to be accountable for its expenditure and the results.
Will they shut down Centrelink payments because some choose to de fraud the system.

One of the reviews into the scheme looked at the price of the course versus what it costs to deliver it. I recently did a truck B double licence that cost $900 at a school that wasn't a Fee help provider. Schools that were providers charged almost double. For the same bit of paper? How can a Fee help instructor rating cost $25k when paying out of your own pocket is 5k less?

I don't know 'just a dumb pilot' have never met him/her. I agree strongly with their sentiments. We are prepared at anytime for an audit from VRQA/FEE-HELP. We employ an RTO compliance group to ensure that at all times the education we deliver is of Diploma standard, the instructors delivering it are fully and properly qualified (there is a bit more to this than teaching a non vet fee aviation course).

We also employ a degree qualified education specialist (ex-school teacher) to internally audit all of the Diploma records, to help design courses, to liaise with students on their progress, to design remedial programs.

Maybe that answers some of your questions pilotechute?

As long as the taxpayer funds all the lawyers out there, I don't have a problem with helping a few pilots.