There are better alternatives to international student visa policies

The federal government’s decision to cut migration numbers by targeting international students is having disastrous effects. Photo: Gaye Gerard

The Australian government’s decision to target international student visas in an attempt to cut migration numbers is already having a disastrous impact on the nation’s university sector. It’s time to clean up this mess before it’s too late instead of pointing fingers at education providers and agents.

The new migration strategy has seen approval rates for Australian student visas drop to the lowest level in almost two decades, with one in five overseas students having their visa applications rejected during the second half of 2023.

In a recent letter to Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil and Education Minister Jason Clare, the leaders of 16 universities have warned that the tighter restrictions on overseas student visas will reduce their revenues by $310 million this year. That’s broadly similar to the impact of the pandemic, which the sector is still trying to recover from.

The government classifies education providers into three categories when assessing how likely they are to accept non-genuine students, where Level 1 is the lowest risk and Level 3 is the highest. Visa refusals are a big deal for education providers because they account for 50 per cent of the weighting in determining these risk classifications.

The recent spike in visa refusals, combined with the expected rise in risk classification levels, will negatively impact the reputation and market share of Australian education providers. But despite their valid concerns, they have no choice but to comply with the government’s migration strategy.

Understandably, education providers are focused on putting out the fire in their own backyards as they work through this problem. This is why they have been writing to agents in recent weeks asking them to withdraw or defer enrolments until next semester.

If agents don’t follow this instruction, they are being advised that the education providers will cancel these enrolments. This means agents won’t get paid for the hard work they have done. Worse still, it puts them in an embarrassing situation with students they have placed and risks destroying their hard-earned reputations.

Students previously awarded places are also suffering, which is unfair on them and bad news for Australia’s $36.4 billion overseas student industry, which relies heavily on word of mouth referrals built on positive experiences.

The role of an education provider is to attract quality overseas students with good academic records and English language abilities. It should not be their responsibility to assess the genuine nature or financial viability of overseas applicants. That is a job for the Department of Home Affairs.

It’s time for government to start taking responsibility instead of blaming education providers and agents for the mess it has created. And there are simple measures that government could put in place to help fix the issues it is trying to address.

The first would be to link student visas to education providers and qualification levels, asking anyone looking to change education provider once they are in the country to reapply for their visa. This would weed out the small number of education providers motivated purely by financial gain, and prevent students from switching providers or downgrading courses. A similar scheme in New Zealand has been a great deterrent.

The second would be to put financial assurances in place. Instead of asking universities to assess the financial viability of an overseas student, the government could follow Canada’s lead in asking students to pay for the first year of tuition upfront and deposit the first year’s living expenses into an approved bank account. This would ensure that student have the finances in place to pursue their studies without having to seek part-time employment, and prevent some from using fraudulent financial documentation.

Students could also be prevented from switching in the first year of study to increase the likelihood that they stick with their chosen course and education provider. They are currently able to switch after six months, but education providers invest a lot of resources into helping students settle into a different culture, and extending this period would help students make more informed decisions.

Finally, government should remove risk assessment levels as they send the wrong message to the market about the quality of education providers. Instead, they should focus on measuring the quality of education providers using a series of key metrics including visa approval and cancellation rates, and course completion.

More frequent auditing of education providers using this data would create an incentive for them to monitor the performance of agents and take corrective action against those not performing in the best interests of students.

It’s time for government to start taking responsibility instead of hurting the prospects of many genuine students while blaming education providers and agents for the mess. Australia’s reputation as a world-class destination for overseas students depends on it.

Naresh Gulati is CEO and founder of Ascent One and BPO Intelligence. He is a former international student.