Parliamentary inquiry calls for action against “bottom end” colleges

A parliamentary inquiry has called for tough action against “bottom end” private colleges using international students in migration scams.

Inquiry chair Deborah O'Neill said the report was a chance to “rebuild and reset” Australia’s international education sector. Photo: Martin Ollman

A parliamentary committee inquiry has called for “determined and focused action” against “bottom end” private colleges which have scammed the Australian education system and broken migration law to exploit international students.

The Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade inquiry’s interim report, tabled in the parliament on Thursday, said regulators had to “weed out disreputable (education) providers and send a strong message that Australia is serious about protecting the integrity of international education”.

The report said radical action should be considered including suspending or cancelling the approvals for some colleges to enrol international students and a 12 month pause on new approvals for colleges to enrol international students.

The federal government has already threatened to suspend colleges with high visa refusal rates, saying in August that it was willing to employ never-before-used powers to do this.

The report also called for stepped up assessment of vocational education colleges and a “fit and proper person test” to operate a college.

Deborah O’Neill, chair of the trade subcommittee which produced the report, said it was an opportunity to “rebuild and reset” Australia’s “complex and important” international education sector.

“It is essential to ensure the integrity of the sector and that the quality of education provided to international students is the highest possible”, Senator O’Neill said.

The committee report also called for tougher regulation of education agents who funnel most international students to colleges and universities.

It said students needed more consumer protection, including standard refund conditions, and there should be mandatory disclosure of all payments made to agents by education institutions.

The report welcomed the federal government’s recent announcement banning education agent commissions for international students transferring between education institutions onshore in Australia. It said the government needed to ensure that the ban was watertight and that commissions were not disguised, for example, as marketing costs.

The ban on commissions for onshore transfers is aimed to restrict the practice whereby shonky agents enrol international students in a university or college with a high reputation (which makes obtaining a visa easier), but the student later transfers to a dodgy college with much lower fees and poor education outcomes.

These schemes are not for an education purpose, but a backdoor way of bringing young people into Australia to work and, in August, the government banned such transfers within an international student’s first six months in Australia.

Such schemes also hurt universities and other high reputation education providers which initially enrol such students. Students in these schemes are labelled a migration risk by the Department of Home Affairs and this damages the visa rating of the education institution which initially enrolled the student.

The committee said the government should “consider adjustments to the student visa system so that visa risk follows the student, shifting to the receiving providers when students transfer onshore to other providers”.

International Education Association of Australia CEO Phil Honeywood said there was universal agreement in the sector that tough action was needed against “the minority of education providers and agents who do the wrong thing”.

“Many of the recommendations are about protecting students from being exploited and thereby damaging Australia’s world class reputation,” he said.