Less than one third of students who enrolled in fee-free TAFE since 2023 have completed courses. Is this a problem?

xavierarnau/Getty Images Fee-free TAFE has been promoted as one of the Albanese government’s key education policies to train more nurses and builders. But new course completion figures released last week have sparked debate among industry leaders about whether the policy is working. New data suggests enrolments have slowed, and many students who started a fee-free course have not yet completed it. Of the 814,000 student enrolments in fee-free TAFE courses since 2023, 258,000 have completed…