If a student receives the Student Start-up and/or Relocation Scholarship payments because they are proposing to undertake an approved scholarship course and starts such a course but is not undertaking an approved scholarship course at the end of 35 days after course commencement or after the date they qualified for the payment, an overpayment for the amount of the Scholarship/s is raised against the student.
Changing from one approved scholarship course to another does not trigger an overpayment. It is only if the student, having received the payment and started an approved scholarship course, does not continue studying an approved scholarship course, that an overpayment should be raised.
For example, a student might start studying course A, then two weeks into the course change to course B. Provided course B is an approved scholarship course there is no overpayment.
The debt is taken to have arisen when the student received the payment. Commission has the discretion to waive this debt if the student is not undertaking the course as mentioned above due to exceptional circumstances beyond the student's control (see 7.5.10 of the VCES Instrument and 7.3.10 of the MRCAETS Instrument).