Free laptops, big debts: College recruitment whistleblower speaks out

Date
    December 24, 2015
    Canberra Times

19-year-old Mitchell Broadstock was homeless when he took a job at a private college network that was recruiting desperate young people like himself.   

Homeless and with a pregnant girlfriend, 19-year-old Mitchell Broadstock was looking for an opportunity when a private college network offered him a job in January.

Starting in a shopping centre stall in Campsie in Sydney's west, then to Centrelink, homeless refuges, and drug and alcohol rehabilitation centres, Mr Broadstock would earn tens of thousands of dollars recruiting students by handing out free laptops as part of the multibillion-dollar vocational education industry.

In the past month Fairfax Media has reported on three colleges that have allegedly recruited students and saddled them with thousands of dollars of Commonwealth debt.


All three colleges have now been deregistered by the federal government's Australian Skills and Quality Authority, putting more than 10,000 Australian students in limbo.   

Mr Broadstock decided to speak out to stop other vulnerable young people from both recruiting and being recruited into Australia's scandal-ridden private college industry, which is reliant on federal government student loans, worth up to $4 billion this year.

On Wednesday, NSW Minister for Family and Community Services, Brad Hazzard, warned "shyster training colleges" were targeting the foster care system. He has directed the department to warn thousands of carers across the state about the threat.

For Mr Broadstock it is personal. He has spent almost his entire life in foster care and dropped out of school at 14.

When he started his new job, the formula was simple: target people like himself.

"I would just sit in Centrelink up the road and talk to people while they waited. I'd say I'm lucky, I've just changed my life. I would bring them back down to the stand and sign them up," he said.

"I was going to use my story to leverage every single kid into debt," he said.

Within weeks he had also signed up his own pregnant girlfriend and his estranged mother to courses, at the cost of up to $22,000 in Commonwealth debt each.

"If you got so many students in a month you could win a car, that just got me really excited. A $50,000 salary, with bonuses, I just couldn't turn it down.

"Now I feel sick to my stomach."   

Most of Mr Broadstock's fellow sales agents at the company he worked for were from similar backgrounds, he said.

"They get signed up to a course, and then if they refer a couple of family members or friends, they get offered a job. It is their second chance at life. Most have been in a downward spiral. You take a $55,000-a-year salary hands down."

In April, Mr Broadstock wanted to try his luck in western NSW. He was too late. Many potential students in the state's poorest areas had already got their laptops in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars worth of taxpayer debt .   

"Everywhere was just milked, Glen Innes, Bourke, Dubbo, Tamworth."

Mr Broadstock is still technically employed by the multinational company that provides courses in business, design and beauty. It cannot be named because he has signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Mr Broadstock said colleges still hand out laptops, but only after a student had registered their interest and they were "on loan" for the duration of the course. The practice will become illegal from January 1.

He said the federal government's recent crackdown had resulted in colleges attempting to sign up students on a much larger scale before new legislation comes into effect on New Year's Day, a sentiment supported by NSW Fair Trading.

"It is likely that dishonest providers may be extra active in attempting to sign up as many young people as possible before the new legislation is in place," a statement said last week.

On Wednesday Mr Hazzard warned "Shyster training colleges [need] to stop ripping off vulnerable children in foster care or who have just exited foster care.

"It is one more savage attack by organisations that appear to have no morals."   

Relationships Australia manager, Bernard Brown, who assists young adults who have come out of foster care, said that Mr Broadstock was just the tip of the iceberg.

"There are hundreds kids that we are in touch with across the network. It makes us so angry."

He urged students who had been affected by private college debts to make a complaint to Fair Trading and the ACCC "so they can go after these cowboys".

When the Libs flog off assets do they actually make sure some regulations are in place or is it just about trying to make the figures look good .......... from selling assets.

no one died.  labors insulation debacle killed 4 people and an entire industry.

Kat wrote on Dec 26^th, 2015 at 8:32am:


it certainly did and the RC and pretty much everyone else who isnt insane like you agrees

Good points from Kiron22.  Heartily support them.

With this lib debacle, we now have taxpayers out of pocket for low chance of students paying back their loans.  We have students who are now saddled with debts that they probably won't be able to pay back for their rest of the lives.  We have (most likely lib supporters) people in the private education industry rolling in government cash, feeding of people's debts.

More people are affected by this than Lab's policy for sure.  Another generation of working poor...

longweekend58 wrote on Dec 26^th, 2015 at 8:42am:


There is no doubt people (four) died participating in the Scheme, but, mariamelielongtime, I'd be pleased if you can show me where the RC found that to be the fault of the Labor Party.

longweekend58 wrote on Dec 26^th, 2015 at 1:05pm:


Ah.  So, as I knew, your claim that the RC agrees was, yet again, more mariamelielongtime garbage.  Situation normal.