NSW Department of Education and Training Ends Higher Education in Hypnosis Opportunity.

HypnosisAustralia, May 2005

By Dr Tracie O'Keefe DCH, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist & Counsellor
Editorial Director of HypnosisAustralia Online.

In the autumn of 2005 the Department of Education and Training NSW sent letters to a hypnosis training school threatening to prosecute it if it acted on behalf of an overseas unaccredited university that offered degrees and doctorates in hypnosis and hypnotherapy. The pretence under which the department acted was that such offers of foreign education were a breach of Australian law in that it was in reality the offering of degrees by establishments in Australia that were not sanctioned by the Australian government, even though it was a foreign degree.

The NSW DET maintained that even though it had no control over foreign universities, it claimed it did have a right to sanction advertising within NSW. The reality of the situation is that Australian government departments are trying to operate a system of protectionism to protect the interest of Australian universities - in other words, these moves were nothing more than market protectionism.

The department quoted a possible breach of section 14 of the NSW Higher Education Act 2001, which states:

A person must not represent that an Australian institution provides any degrees or post-graduate courses, or is authorised to provide any degree or postgraduate course unless:

A the institution is:
(i) An Australian or overseas university, or

(ii) An Australian or overseas higher education, and

B if the course is provided, or is authorised to be provided, by
(i) An overseas higher education institution,
(ii) An Australian or overseas higher education institution,
(iii) The course is accredited in relation to the intuition under division 2.
Maximum penalty: 200 penalty points

The whole affair was prompted by a request from the Australian Universities Quality Agency. In other words, it was a body looking after the sale of Australian education's marketability. With the huge outsourcing of service industries to India and the massive progressive loss of manufacturing to China, the Australian government is more than cautious about any foreign competition. China has recently made an official statement that it does not see Australia's role in the South Pacific as being of any great importance. So when all the minerals have been sold, the government is looking for Australian universities to get out there and sell…sell…sell…education here and abroad.

Accreditation of universities has always been dubious in nature, since there is no international standard. Many universities including Oxford and Cambridge are not in fact accredited and have never made any effort to be so-called accredited. The quality of an education can only be determined by the quality of the course material and the teaching staff and in all universities, they are always inconsistent.

When it comes to hypnosis and hypnotherapy, Australia has absolutely no higher education in those fields. Medics and psychologists teaching to each other over a matter of a few weekends can hardly be considered post-graduate. It has always been seasoned hypnotherapists who have passed on their immense knowledge of the subjects from Messer to Eldman. Both the Calamus International University and the American Pacific University, which are non-campus online establishments, offer degrees and doctorates in hypnotherapy to a very high standard. Neither are accredited, nor pretend to be accredited.

If a person were to walk into a Mercedes showroom here in Australia and buy a car in Berlin through the dealer, the Australian government has no jurisdiction over the validation of the inspection of that car in Berlin. In Australia the gold standard for hypnotherapists is now the Psychotherapists And Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA) register, for which the therapist needs neither a Bachelors nor Master's degree, nor doctorate in hypnotherapy, even though they have to be of post-graduate status.

There are no so-called accredited universities in the world that currently offer Australians the opportunity to train to Bachelor's or Master's degree and doctorate level in their chosen profession. So in a time when Australian hypnotherapists desperately need higher education in hypnotherapy up to a much higher standard that currently exists, the NSW DET has robbed them of that opportunity.

©HypnosisAustralia, May 2005