Where are the students? TAFE enrolments drop by up to 40 per cent

There's only one problem – the prospective students are nowhere to be seen.

When we spent an hour on Friday outside Melbourne Polytechnic's Skills and Jobs Centre on bustling Chapel Street – a one-stop shop designed to entice people into courses – no one entered the building.

The scene is emblematic of the sector's difficulty recruiting students, with enrolments down by up to 40 per cent at some providers, two years after Premier Daniel Andrews promised to "rebuild" TAFE.

Elsewhere, the signs are telling. Some TAFE buildings resemble ghost campuses, rather than thriving centres of learning.

A leaked document obtained by Fairfax Media reveals that at Federation Training in Gippsland, 92 government-funded courses had fewer than 10 students enrolled in them last May.

According to the Education Union, 3300 teachers have left the Victorian TAFE system in the past five years.

"We hear reports that members are working in empty campuses," says Greg Barclay, the vice-president for TAFE at the Victorian branch of the Australian Education Union.

"TAFE enrolments not increasing the way we would have hoped."

So does the government's rhetoric about "saving" TAFE match the reality?

On the one hand, they are getting more public assistance than they have in years, thanks in part to Labor's $320 million "rescue fund". An extensive review of quality training has led to the removal of 22 shonky private providers and a more rigorous selection process. And a new funding model – the aptly-titled Skills First – has increased state subsidies for hundreds of courses.

On the other hand, budget papers suggest that only half of vocational education and training students were more likely to get a job after graduating. And then there's the question of value for money. Recent annual reports reveal that six out of 10 TAFEs relied on additional funding last year to keep them out of deficit, including the Gordon, SuniTAFE and South West Institute. It begs the question: is the money being pumped back into TAFE sustainable?

Skills Minister Gayle Tierney says the government "makes no apologies" for investing in TAFE after the cuts and closures of the former Coalition government, pointing out that "you can't grow enrolments without making sure public institutes are financially viable".

She concedes that fixing TAFE hasn't been easy, but adds that Labor's funding reforms have helped "bring back students to our trusted public providers", with the market share across TAFE and dual sector universities rising in the past two years, from 31 per cent to 37 per cent.

"The Liberals spent four years destroying the TAFE sector, so change will not happen overnight, as much as we'd like it to," Ms Tierney told Fairfax Media.

"Our record investment in TAFE is already having an impact on the lives of tens of thousands of Victorians who wouldn't have been able to access training if it wasn't for the Andrews government."

Maybe so, but annual reports also reveal that in the past year alone, enrolments have plummeted: Sunraysia Institute had a 21 per cent drop, student numbers were down 12 per cent at GOTAFE, and Melbourne Polytechnic experienced a staggering 40 per cent drop in enrolments (although a spokeswoman insists the situation has since improved with enrolments growing 11 per cent every year).

Meanwhile, Federation Training – a new player created through the merger of GippsTAFE and Advance TAFE in the LaTrobe Valley – hasn't tabled an annual report for two years and is refusing to say how many students it enrols. Last year, the TAFE reviewed its curriculum and decided to discontinue 30 of the 92 courses identified in the leaked document obtained by Fairfax Media.

Managing director Jonathan Davis says his new team would rebuild the institute.

In the meantime, students have paid the price. Take Federation Training's student support centre, known as The Bubble, which was designed to provide everything from career advice and counselling to language, literacy and numeracy support. The initiative was launched with much fanfare in 2015; two years and $2.5 million later, it was mysteriously disbanded.

"We were never even properly notified," says nursing diploma student Shelley Pasquill.

The opposition's training spokeswoman Steph Ryan says the government has failed on its promise to save TAFE, because enrolments, training quality and spending has substantially decreased under its watch. "The size of the training sector has contracted by 30 per cent," she says.

But Bruce Mackenzie, who led the state government's review into the training sector, takes a different view.

While TAFEs could do a better job selling their courses, he says, and the enrolment process should be easier, the government had done a "remarkable job turning around the system" under tough circumstances.

He says private training college scandals have unfairly tarnished TAFE's reputation, while a decline in apprenticeships and the uncapping of university places has also driven students away.

"The second tier universities take anyone into their course whether they are suitable or not, which rips the heart out of TAFE institutes," he says.

"The mess the government inherited was significant and it will take a bit of time to fix."

But that mess, according to the AEU, started when the Brumby government created an open market system in 2008, paving the way for an explosion in private providers and rorting.

"The contestable policy will always undermine the TAFE system," says Mr Barclay, who is calling on the Andrews government to guarantee that TAFEs receive a 70 per cent share of total VET funding. "That is the fundamental problem."

Meanwhile, Victorian TAFE Association executive director Andrew Williamson is thinking of the bigger picture, suggesting that the next major wave of reform should not just focus solely on TAFE, but the way VET works across the country.

"The whole sector has been through a horrible time, and we need some really fresh thinking," he said.