Although far from the only unethical training provider, ACTE will sell your soul, set the disadvantaged mid to lower class learners up to fail, and exploit any potential loophole.The good thingsTeachers/colleagues, most of which are passionate about wanting to help students.
The challengesThere are so many challenges that can be expected by working for ACTE.
ACTE has received considerable media coverage in the past, predominantly under its earlier training name Evocca College. Although most of the media reports that can be found are - by nature - dramatic, having been employed there from before the peak of the VET FEE-HELP scheme rorting (start 2014) to the trough of trying to cobble together a viable VET Student Loans system (early 2017), I can attest that much of the reports are true, and that for every one that may be skewed there are many, many worse examples that never made it to \"print\".
It must be stated emphatically that trainers should not be held accountable for the sins of the company.
Trainers weren't the ones offering internal staff incentives until the end of 2016 for any student referrals (if they passed census dates), and few stooped to that level, in spite of the lucrative amounts (although sales teams and \"brokers\" had no ethical barriers).
Trainers weren't the ones that avoided cancelling uncontactable students that had census dates remaining... In fact, myself and members of my team had enrolment cancellation requests declined regularly, including in late 2016 and 2017.
It was the Managing Director, not Trainers, who demanded all students that were \"financials\", with census dates remaining, be called every single day, asking them to \"opt in\" to remaining in the VFH scheme before the cutoff date at the end of March 2017. Every trainer was required to email the Managing Director INDIVIDUALLY to report on their successes and failures for securing the organisation an estimated $30 million in VFH funding, minimum, until the conclusion of the grandfathering clause at the end of 2017.
Where a trainer failed to email for one day, I was contacted directly and asked to explain why, and to make up for all missed calls, with the help of the team.
Trainers were turned into outbound sales call centre staff, up until their redundancy.
Note that students who enrolled into an 18 month diploma at the end of 2016, and who were convinced to opt in, would pass all 4 census dates by the end of 2017, yet be short-changed on their enrolment duration (in many cases I came across this was by up to 5 months).
Middle management did their best in a difficult situation, however maintaining morale in such situations was impossible.
ACTE is a morally and ethically bankrupt company that recorded a half-billion in VFH profit in 2014-'15 alone.