Commonwealth education officials remind HE providers they can’t issue undergraduate certificates after December 31

Unless, that is state, territory and commonwealth ministers, in ponderment assembled, agree to their continuing.

Former education minister Dan Tehan established, and funded, UG Certs in 2020. They were originally intended for people with COVID-19 caused time on their hands to learn new job-skills.

Universities and other HE providers piled into providing them and in February they were legislated into the Provider Category Standards – but without national approval they will be no more at year end.

This, critics say, will be no bad thing, that they were an emergency response not a careful creation to meet an education/training market need. “The extent to which there is a serious policy agenda underlying short course funding is unclear,” Mark Warburton from the Melbourne Centre for the Study of Higher Education says (CMM September 13). Ministers may decide otherwise if the Commonwealth can demonstrate they help jobseekers (CMM September 20).