Created by the Coalition and expanded by Labor, the scheme granted private colleges virtually unregulated access to government subsidies for virtually every student they enrolled.
This created a perverse incentive for some colleges to enrol as many people as they could, sometimes luring them with laptops and other incentives to sign up to often substandard online courses.
Ms Steendam who has taken her fight to the Australian Taxation Office and VET Student Loans Ombudsman was one of its unsuspecting victims.
I hold the government accountable, she told The Sunday Age.
Ms Steendam’s troubles began in 2015 when she enrolled into a double diploma in community services and counselling at the now-defunct Careers Australia.
She was then working f…
Read the full article at: https://www.smh.com.au/education/scared-and-furious-woman-shocked-to-discover-she-has-36-000-education-debt-20180901-p5016j.html