$250 for 10 weeks of focussed help is ok in my book. (forthcoming book that is)

yes the games and graphics industry are dreadful abusers of people.

You make some good points. I didn’t have any problems with my old school of creative media creating a suite of full fee masters programs. I had problems that they were just ‘sponge cake’ curriculums of old TAFE programs, rebranded and pitched at a new audience. Nothing new. So it was a cynical exercise in profiteering. That’s what happens when you ‘morph’.

The RMIT professional writing program was funded to provide training to certificate 4 and diploma level students. When I was there, about half the students had BA’s or post grad quals. The new head of school had problems with that and so did I.

I think generally TAFE’s do a good job. They are underfunded but also carry, like unis, an extraordinary high admin salary load. Enough said.

High demand writing programs should offer night and weekend classes. I’m surprised more don’t. It also maximises the use of their resources out of peak hours. Spoken like a true bureaucrat, I know.

I launched two writing short courses for the babyboomers, on narrative construction and how to write for the web. Don’t know if they’re still going. They were $250 a semester.

The international student industry is a curious case of an industry largely created by policies on other subjects: supposed skills shortages faced by domestic industry and supposed inability of local students to pay the cost of their courses.

This accidental industry policy has been far more successful than any actual industry policy in generating profitable markets.

Yes – The unravelling of the real costs/subsidies/ of medical training “pinched” from service delivery to Unis is ongoing. The amount of $ that had been snaffled over the years from service delivery by Uni teaching and especially research is mind boggling.

State health departments are extremely reluctant to fund floor space for research although are grudgingly coming around to understanding that teaching perhaps might need the odd computer and seminar room.

Ironically the thing that speeded up the teaching/research costing excercise was the Unis greedily sucking up all those extra full fee overseas $, and expecting health services to supply the extra training spaces for sfa.

Everyone, economists and lefties, likes to stick the boots in to the Medico Colleges for restricting numbers but the training system *in the services* is stretched to absolute capacity.

anyway a bit off topic – lets get back to doctors and lawyers doing TAFE courses and RMIT having a problem ‘cos it can only attract the “best and brightest high achievers”, who resent paying, even to its TAFE courses.

Malcolm – whats to be done about the idiocy of structures at the moment in TAFE – when a well regarded essentially short morphs into a bloody post Grad Masters fulltime and expensive to replace it.

TAFE is now best known for colluding with dodgy immigration agents, near slave labour cooking/restaurant owners, 7/11 owners, hairdressers, and slum landlords to rip off overseas students.

No space for a decent part time writing course at night or weekend that doesn’t require a mortage to pay for?

RMIT Creative Media used to be an excellent school and about 50 percent of TAFE writing students had first degrees. We called this reverse articulation. It was the place to go to get a good education in writing, multimedia and photography.

I had a problem with it at the time as I could see the programs not letting in Koori and western suburbs students – although we had a fair share of the latter.

The problem was that for their $80 per subject, they wanted to be treated like post graduates. Not on. I started a Masters of Arts in Creative Writing in 2001 and many took that option.

The massive fee hike in an ironic way has solved the ‘reverse articulation’ problem. No one will pay $8K for a TAFE program.

Back then RMIT Professional Writing & Editing was ’boutique’ or elitist – producing writers like Martine Murray, Alexis Wright and many more. It was a writing factory for the very best and it showed in books published. Those were the days.

Maybe before contributing to our culture by writing, etc… they could work in a paying job they hate (this should provide plenty of motivation/inspiration). Seriously work for 1-2 years, save the cash rather than going OS on a trip every summer to Paris/NY to appreciate the “culture” and then study again. To be a struggling creative type involves doing some struggling.

There is a large sub-set of students who chop and change and study a whole series of different things. Some (not all) seem to be terrified of graduating and having to actually get a full-time job.

Graduates of almost any field who’ve spent a couple of years working and then go to study something else can afford to pay $8K themselves.

This will be good news to Victorian hospitals at least, most of them don’t know where to apply to get these “big dollops of capital”. You have a secret source?