Names purged from private college report

THE Victorian government has published a report on its open training market after deleting certain information.

THE Victorian government has published a report on its open training market after deleting information on the colleges that have prospered and suffered under the new system.

The final 2011 report omits enrolment data and names of the most popular private colleges, both of which had been included in an earlier draft.

University of Melbourne tertiary education expert Leesa Wheelahan said information on private training provision was extremely sparse, and the data that had been left out was not available through any other source.

"This is very strange behaviour from a government committed to transparency," she said.

Meanwhile, issues have emerged about the fastest-growing private providers identified in the earlier version of the report. Origin HR, whose enrolments in two courses increased more than 6600 per cent last year, has been accused of copyright breaches involving one of the courses and has had government funds withheld over a "claiming error".

Last month, one of its recruitment teams promoted certificate III and IV courses, which typically take at least six months, as requiring just 40 hours to complete.

John Rawlinson, who is chief executive of Origin HR's umbrella company, Talent2, acknowledged the errors and said if the company had breached copyright it would rectify it. But Mr Rawlinson said they were the types of isolated mistakes that could arise in any large organisation, and did not reflect the quality of the courses.

"We would rather slow down enrolments than be accused of not providing a good-quality outcome," he said.

Mr Rawlinson said the focus should be on students' completion and employment rates, and that colleges would be held accountable for their students' outcomes.

The agency that administers the training system would not say why information on individual colleges had been left out of its report, other than the earlier version was "the one that is standardly produced for stakeholders".

The newly named Higher Education and Skills Group, formerly Skills Victoria, would not comment on any audits or funding arrangements with Origin HR. And despite Origin HR's acknowledgement of improper advertising, the HESG said there was "no evidence" it was advertising courses inappropriately.