He’s been convicted for misleading advertising in his home country of New Zealand and Daniel Hunt appears to continue his misleading advertising here in Australia – but the Australian education authorities are doing nothing about it!
Misleading advertising makes it harder for genuine hard working businesses to compete. Organisations like Mentor Education had to pay a lot of money and hire qualified staff and maintain their registration as a Registered Training Organisations (RTO) to be able to offer their Diplomas. They went broke leaving thousands of students unable to finish their real qualifications.
RTO’s have to compete with companies like the Career Academy on price despite the cost differences but Daniel Hunt and his team continue to spend money on Google Ads to promote it.
Diploma is a Protected Term
In New Zealand and Australia there are some terms that are protected and this document lists them.
It is important to protect these terms because they usually mean a level of authority and trust.
When companies like The Career Academy are allowed to continue to mislead students and gain financially they make it harder for legitimate training companies to stay in business.
A Diploma is a qualification along the pathway to a higher qualification like an Advanced Diploma or a Bachelors degree.
What makes matters even worse is that there is no such Diploma as a Diploma in Xero yet The Career Academy are actively paying Google ads to promote a Xero Diploma.
Not only are they advertising directly using Google Ads but they are also using the marketing organisation behind tafecourses.com.au, shortcourses.com.au and training.com.au to attract students.
Try it out for yourself. Do a search for Xero Diploma and see if they are still advertising.
Student complaints when they realise too late
You don’t need to try very hard to find complaints about The Career Academy from clients who thought they enrolled into something more valuable for their careers.
This post on Reddit is a response to someone who realised that the qualification they receive from The Career Academy is NOT what they expected when they paid their money. Is there recourse really just to have made this discovery in less than 2 weeks!?
The Ultimate Xero Training Course
The Xero Course offered by National Bookkeeping is NOT a nationally accredited course but it teaches you bookkeeping skills using practical examples and real business case studies.
You learn most of the things you need to know to manage the financial aspects of a business – from setup to daily transactions and bank reconciliation and payroll to financial reporting.
Students who need a nationally accredited course in bookkeeping need the Cert IV in Bookkeeping and Accounting. Most of the students we speak with who need it want to then go on to get a higher accounting degree or want to become a Registered BAS Agent.
The reason BAS Agent’s need to complete the Cert IV in Bookkeeping is because they will go on to perform BAS Services for small businesses and need to know the legal obligations for these services.