One of the country’s largest training colleges has been ordered to shut down amid allegations that it failed to prevent students cheating, as part of an aggressive crackdown by the vocational education watchdog to clean up the sector.
Entry Education, a college operator that is allowed to continue operating while it appeals against the decision, claims it has been maliciously targeted and that the watchdog is concerned only with “gaining scalps” and unfairly making providers liable for the actions of cheating websites.
The government is on a major vocational education compliance blitz.Credit: Andrew Quilty
The operator is among 13 vocational training colleges that have had their registration cancelled by the Australian Skills Quality Authority since October last year, with more than 100 providers currently under investigation.
In the report detailing reasons to cancel Entry Education’s registration, seen by this masthead, the authority also accused the college of rushing students through courses. It claimed the college took shortcuts and was not focused on quality, saying it did not adequately ensure that every student met all training requirements and that their responses were their work.
The real estate training provider – which enrols thousands of Australians a year and has offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane – says the Australian Skills Quality Authority has relied heavily on examples of anonymous people asking online for answers to assessments in its decision to shut them down.
The decision to cancel the college’s registration comes during a crackdown by the federal government on the sector, and after the authority received $33 million in 2023 to boost its compliance operations and open a tip-off line.
Entry Education chief executive Matthew Trounce.
That announcement was largely in response to reviews of the migration system and exploitation of Australia’s visa system, but also affected providers who cater for domestic students.
Entry Education chief executive Matthew Trounce said he was “shocked and appalled” by the decision to cancel its registration and believed it had been unfairly targeted.
“ASQA is only concerned with trying to get scalps and is doing nothing to assist registered training organisations in dealing with very complex, global cheating issues,” he told this masthead. “We are collateral damage.”
In response to allegations it rushed students through diplomas that should have taken between six and 12 months in as little as 42 days, Trounce said the college stood by its assessments.
He claimed some of the expedited diplomas cited by the regulator included students who had years, or even decades, of industry experience and were completing their course under a recognised pathway which allowed their experience to count towards a qualification.
Trounce said any legitimate issues raised in the report were minor, and noted the college had been audited and granted a seven-year re-registration just months before the Australian Skills Quality Authority began its investigation.
“Throughout the 10-month audit last year, Entry Education rectified all the minor issues uncovered within weeks of being notified of the issues. It was only in the final ASQA report that it made the findings about cheating and did not provide us an opportunity to respond or rectify before it deregistered us,” he said.
The authority’s report said there was “significant concern” over the college’s use of online assessments, and it believed students had used AI to complete work, pointing to an example which it said appeared “too perfect” and showed indications of being an AI-generated response.
It said the impact of the deficiencies was considerable due to the vast number – at least 16,560 – of students enrolled.
The report included screenshots from websites, some of which are linked to contract cheating, as evidence some of the college’s assessments were compromised because some answers could be found on the internet.
“Answers to the provider’s assessment questions were publicly available on the internet for all students to access and use as their own responses,” the report said, referring to content found on third-party websites and posted by unknown people.
An example of the evidence used by the Australian Skills Quality Authority to cancel Entry Education’s registration.
Trounce said the authority’s findings meant online assessments were “all but dead”, and registered training organisations were liable for the actions of any person who sought answers on cheating sites.
“If a measure of what is available online is a measure of compliance, then there will not be many RTOs, including TAFEs, left standing,” he said.
Claire Field, a former vocational education regulator, said the Australian Skills Quality Authority had not provided any significant assistance to providers about the growing threat of contract cheating and generative AI.
“As a general rule, when a regulator finds a system-wide problem like this, it needs to be offering guidance and education before it takes regulatory action and issues cancellations,” she said.
Field said the authority’s approach was in contrast to the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, the higher education regulator, which had done years of work to help universities understand and identify contract cheating and redesign assessments after the emergence of AI.
The Australian Skills Quality Authority said that for legal reasons, it could not comment on the decision to cancel Entry Education’s registration, with the college granted a stay on the decision after appealing to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
The authority said of the 174 serious matters being investigated relating to 138 providers, 75 per cent related to training for international students, and 68 per cent related to fraud, including bogus qualifications, cash for qualifications and the fabrication of assessments.
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