Unis fail on student oversight

It has long been obvious that there are legitimate community concerns that some international students use the special visas they are given as a cover while they work full-time and plan to settle here. The latest revelations from Queensland University of Technology demonstrate this may well be taking place on an industrial scale.

In its latest annual report, QUT said half of its international students were phantom enrolments. They failed to turn up to class and then dropped out. According to QUT: “The retention rate for international students dropped to an unusual and historic low of 53 per cent because of the unusually high number of students who did not meaningfully engage from the outset.”

The QUT confession raises an alarming prospect that the good intentions of Australia’s tertiary education international outreach are being exploited and nobody has been paying attention or taken responsibility to do something about it. The nearby Griffith University has confirmed that about one-quarter of its international students have dropped out as well.

While there are clear benefits, the downside of the boom in international student numbers is well understood. Compromises have been made in relation to the ability of some students to speak and understand English. This does a disservice to other students who are seeing the rigour of their educational experience diminished.

University lecturers also are under pressure to compromise on standards because of the large sums of money that international students bring to university balance sheets. This is exacerbated by the fact high international student numbers and their rivers of cash can be a key performance indicator for vice-chancellors when determining their rates of remuneration.

Out in the real world there has been a furore over the number of international student visas issued, and concerns about the impact these students are having – real or imagined – on rental accommodation in some major centres. There is an urgent need for greater oversight of what is going on, both from universities and government.

The QUT revelations suggest an industry has been spawned in student visas as a pure pathway to settlement. The evidence for this is strengthened by figures from the Administrative Review Tribunal that show students who are sent packing increasingly are refusing to go.

As we reported on Wednesday, the number of international students challenging visa decisions has soared. Whereas students used to make up about 14 per cent of the tribunal workload, they now make up 61.7 per cent.

Former immigration department deputy secretary Abul Rizvi has noted that this will be a compounding problem because student visa holders will remain onshore while their cases are processed by the tribunal. It is an area that needs urgent attention but should be easy to fix.

Student visas must be conditional on attending courses and achieving satisfactory results. Anything less simply opens the door for criminal enterprise, undermines our immigration efforts, and lines the pockets of smart immigration lawyers who will always put the national interest last.