ASQA have released their new proposed fees for RTO & CRICOS providers, coming into effect on July 1st 2020. These changes are a result of their move to a full-cost recovery model, with taxpayers no longer subsidising their regulatory costs. 

The most common fees for RTO & CRICOS providers can be broken down into three parts:

1. The lodgement and assessment fees for registration
2. The actual cost of registration
3. Audit costs
   

You can find the proposed fees for each of these below.

Fee changes for registration lodgements and assessments

Registration lodgement fees are increasing for new RTOs, making it a little more expensive for them to initially register. For existing RTOs, lodgement fees to re-register are decreasing substantially.

Fee changes for annual registration

This is known as the Annual Registration Charge (ARC), and the changes are a little more complicated. Currently, ASQA charges for registration based solely on the number of courses the training organisation offers, but going forward, they’ll be charging based on the number of courses, and the number of students at the training organisation.

Essentially, the more students you have, the more you’ll pay, with substantial price hikes when falling in the higher brackets.

In addition, registration costs for RTOs and CRICOS/ELICOS providers are merged into one, rather than being split. CRICOS/ELICOS providers could end up saving a little, or paying a whole lot more, depending on the number of students on their books.

Current registration costs

New registration costs

Fee changes for audits

Audit costs are increasing, but only by a small amount—an extra $10 p/hr (+3.5%).

Other fee changes

There’s an entirely separate set of fee changes for non-RTOs who offer accredited courses, which can be found in ASQA’s fees and charges proposal under sections 7.1 and 7.3.

ASQA want your feedback

Before ASQA implements the fee changes, they’d like feedback from training organisations, on areas such as:

• How the new fees might affect your business
• How the new fees might affect your students
• Whether the new fees might affect the quality of your training
  

You can submit feedback to ASQA from their cost recovery page online, or email them at costrecovery@asqa.gov.au. They’ll be accepting feedback until Monday 9th December 2019.

Who knows? If ASQA hears the same argument from multiple training organisations, they might even lower their new prices.