TAFE - Value for money study
At TAFE you don't pay HECS but you do pay course fees (up front unless there are special circumstances) which vary from one course (and state/territory) to another, but are almost always quite a lot cheaper than HECS. Other costs (books and stationery, field trips, lab fees, painting materials etc) always run to hundreds of dollars and sometimes a thousand or more a year.
Calculating TAFE fees
Fee concessions
What are my payment options?
Funding and incentives for individuals
TAFE diplomas are on par with the diplomas and associate degrees offered by universities, and increasingly carry full credit toward a university degree. What's more, fees for Australian residents for TAFE diploma courses are well below HECS.
A year doing business (for example) at TAFE would cost a maximum of $1200 - depending on the state you live in and the level of study- in comparison to the maximum 2005 HECS rate of $6837 per unit. A concession price may also be available to some TAFE students. Remember though, some TAFE institutes offer higher education courses which are charged at rates nearer the university end of the price range!
One way of beating the HECS increase is to complete a two-year diploma at TAFE and then do a third year at university to convert to a degree. The all-up cost will probably be about a third of the price of three years at university. (Before enrolling, though, make sure that the TAFE course in question will deliver full university credit.) Too few students choose to pursue this option: just 15,000 first-year university students, in 2002, had TAFE qualifications.
Interestingly, the really big migration runs the other way - tens of thousands of university graduates head off to TAFE each year to get practical (employable) skills.
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