My cae experience has been bad and I have the support of class mates in my complaints about the poor quality standards in their CertIV community services at Flinders lane.
Teachers don't turn up on time or just don't turn up and when they do its amateur hour with clichés and buzz words but no real content or subject matter that will serve in the real world and staff have an over reliance of the student web technology that fails constantly leading to lost assessments and generally creates constant barriers to learning.
Combine this with admin attitudes that won't own their failures and either blame students or government cuts for their poor delivery and productivity and you have the exact apathy that is endemic to an inevitable system failure-avoid CAE like the plague Rmit or Swinburne or even some of the private organisations are better learning options Cae have a public servant bludger mentality that can only be fixed by an intense audit into its admin culture!

I've done a number of courses at CAE - I did a Spanish language course (over a few months) and silversmithing (over a few weeks) in around 2009-10, and a beginner crochet course (half day) last year, then resin jewellery (half day) a few weeks ago.

The instructors have all been really wonderful - very friendly and approachable, all knowledgeable and clearly happy to be there. It's great to have teachers who are genuinely interested in and excited about teaching, and willing to give each person individual attention. The craft courses I did all enabled me to complete at least one project, and basically equipped me with teh skills to do whatever I wanted to do. You're taught the craft, and the teachers then give you the assistance to use that knowledge to make your own thing.

The resin jewellery course is the only one I thought was a bit overpriced. It was a few hours on a weekend and only enabled each person to make 2 little resin things, when there would have been ample time to do more. I thought that the course cost would have covered enough materials/resources to allow more, but it was still a great course and I would recommend it.

Approximate cost: $70/half day - totally depends though

I did a short course for Workplace English Language and Literacy Programs (WELL) and found it to be perfect. The teaching method was up to date and the teachers were very good.

I completed a course in community services at CAE after not studying for many years. The teachers were fantastic and the course was well organised.

Approximate cost: $505

Amazing! Really good short courses and a great way to make friends. Their courses on IT and web are really good, and on photography. Really helpful tutors. Sometimes its hard to get through on the phone.

Approximate cost: $very good value, damn cheap really!

I recently completed an Intro to Adobe Creative Suite (for Mac) course over 2 days at CAE on Flinders Lane. Enrolling for this course was a breeze and my initial emails enquiring about the course were quickly answered. The facilities at this campus were excellent and modern. I feel the cost of this course was also not only reasonable but competetive to other courses I had considered. A great introduction to Photoshop, Illustrator and In Design and further courses in each program are also available through CAE should I wish to learn more.

Approximate cost: $354.00