Again, RTOs are positioned on the wrong end of the spectrum if you look at the diffusion of innovation.
To give you an idea of where RTOs are positioned on this curve, technology is said to double every 18 months, yet RTOs don’t have to change over to the new “streamlined” Business services training qualification for 18 months (after the October 2020 release). This means learners could miss out on a whole generation of technology if they do a course with an RTO in 18 months.
This positions RTOs into the laggard section of the diffusion of innovation, as shown by the TAE upgrade when an overwhelming majority for RTO trainer didn’t do their PD until the standard where changed so the trainers would lose their job if they didn’t do it.
To get employment, people need to update their skills in new technology, short courses or skill sets that they can use 100% of what they learned right now. This is why informal learning popular with early adopters and the early majority, who are the most motivated learners who will pay a premium for quality and make up almost 50% of the population.
While small business are happy to just learn what works, Big business also wants to know why it works so they can improve it pooling the company’s existing resources. So this is the market for L&D (also called “corporate” training).
That leaves the poor old RTOs to the laggards, who have to learn how to use zoom first before they could even think about doing online training. And as laggards only learn new things when they are forced to, they are high maintenance as learners and under stress humans can’t learn new things.
Laggards prefer to do training with other laggards. As crazy as that sounds, it’s because most trainers don’t have the industry currency to do training with early adopters. They can’t get the referrals needed from early adopters a business needs to go out on their own. So it’s not just the RTOs that are trapped in the formal system, trainers are stuck on #taetanic too as most of the life rafts left 18 months ago. It’s too late to catch up.