Prativa Shrestha, February 20, 2019
After more than 1000 students enrolling in Diploma of Nursing in AIBT (Australia Institute of Business & Technology) were stranded due to failed accreditation of their degree, ASQA (Australian Skills Quality Authority) has decided to revoke the registration of the institution.
The authority has made the decision to cancel the VET and CRICOS registration of the Sydney and Brisbane based AIBT after it was found that the institution had breached numerous conditions and failed to conduct honest and correct marketing practices.
AIBT is registered under two separate RTO’s (Registered Training Organisations) under the banner of AIBT Global.
According to SBS Nepali, the cancellation of registration will come into effect on 26 March 2019. However, legislation allows the provider to appeal the decision within 28 days at the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. AIBT has decided to defend the decision of ASQA.
ASQA stated that providers are responsible not to mislead students and on behalf of education agents that enrolling into unregistered course will result in registration of graduates.
ESOS Act (Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000) looks after the best interests of overseas students. However, the act does not have direct control over the activities of education agents including the one in overseas. The ESOS act requires the provider itself to regulate the conduct of education agents they have agreement with.
One of the Nepali nursing students stated, “The limited information source we had were provider’s website and agents. My agent asked me to sign a paper mentioning that all information was provided to me”. They were simply told by education agents that the provider was registered. However, when overseas students were enrolled to AIBT, they were unaware about the different types of accreditation.
ANMAC (Australian Nursing & Midwifery Accreditation Council) and NMBA (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia) had released a notice on April of last year to aware providers not to enroll students before getting the accreditation.
According to SBS Nepali, ASQA stated, “AIBT failed to show that its training and assessment practices enabled each learner to meet all requirements of their course, it had sufficient resources including qualified staff and facilities or it had implemented an assessment system to ensure learners had the skills needed.”
It had come to light that the students who were supposed to graduate very soon had not even attended their first clinical placements. It was also revealed that numerous complaints from students were unheard for long period.
Students are frustrated and depressed that they have been robed off their time, money and future. Students were paying up to $16000 for the course each year.
Students affected by the provider are asked to contact the Tuition Protection Service on 02 6271 3440 for assistance or Commonwealth Overseas Student Ombudsman in the link below
http://www.ombudsman.gov.au/How-we-can-help/overseas-students
