NEW funding to support “innovation and structural reform” in the TAFE system is too little, too late for Victoria University, according to TAFE supporters.
The Australian Education Union last week warned that the state government’s promise of $50 million a year over the next four years would fail to undo the damage already inflicted at VU TAFE.
Branch vice-president Greg Barclay said VU courses, including sport and fitness, hospitality, business, tourism and boatbuilding, had already been cut due to a $32 million funding shortfall, following last year’s statewide cuts totalling $300 million.
Western suburbs author and former TAFE student Amra Pajalic called for the funding to go directly to services where cuts had been made. “The money taken from Victoria University needs to be returned to the courses that were robbed of it,” she said.
Higher Education and Skills Minister Peter Hall said the government funding changes meant more students were enrolling in vocational education and training.
But Western Metropolitan Greens MP Colleen Hartland slammed last week’s funding announcement as a PR stunt that did nothing to help students or the staff who had already lost their jobs. “The money being allocated to TAFEs is to undertake ‘innovation and structural reforms’ and TAFEs are also being given more power to sell their assets,” she said. “This sounds like code for privatisation and selling our TAFE campuses that have had so much public money invested in them over the years.”
The National Tertiary Education Union agreed the changes could pave the way for privatisation.
Friends of VU spokesman Paul Adams cast doubts on whether the institution would receive any of the funding.
“To get back to where it was, Victoria University would need 50 per cent of the funding on offer over the next three years, which just isn’t realistic,” he said.
