I have a few concerns that this is simply spin. While I didn't agree with all of King's article, it's hard to refute that a fee rise of 1000 per cent is outrageous.

If you went in to shop one day and payed $1.00 for a loaf of bread and went in the following day and paid $10.00, you'd hit the roof.

Reading between the lines, Renner's article seems like the staff are fighting for their jobs. Surely there are people who can help them in this fight. Where are the unions? Smuggly collecting fees levied from staff wages and doing nothing.

The only other comment I'd make is that I've never heard of an associate degree.

Malcolm King says:

.#...The program was killed by ridiculous 'one size fits all' thinking by the former Brumby Government. It levelled the TAFE system in Victoria as fully as any battalion of tanks. It deregulated TAFE courses and opened up fees to market forces. This meant massive fee hikes of more than 500 per cent in some cases…#.

...Here is the “key component of complaint” made by Malcolm King, lifted from his article. The fundamental question from his criticism is, who in our society is side-lined by such Government decisions which ramp-up the User-Pay concept at the level of Education?

...The Blindness of the "User Pay" logic, positions Australia as a nation the loser. REMIT is a high profile example of the hollowing-out effect on the TAFE system throughout Australia, leaving, as a consequence, chunks of society under-skilled, out of work and out of luck in a supposed “Lucky Country”!

Yes, I agree with Diver Dan.

The program in question seems to be a victim of user pays. Normally I don't have too much of a problem with this although the writer puts a strong case for a case-bycase funding model.

What we are seeing across Australia is the total moneterization of TAFE. One could almost cut the states and the Commonwealth out of the equation totally and just ask the students to write the cheques directly to the registered training organisations.