Foreign students need better English skills, Migration Strategy says
International students will need to better English language skills and pursue qualifications in demand by potential employers, under an overhaul aimed at preventing ‘visa hopping’.
International students will need better English language skills and to pursue qualifications most likely to be in demand by potential employers, under an overhaul of entry requirements also aimed at preventing “visa hopping” among foreign students.
As part of an overarching task of “reconnecting migration policy to nation building”, the government’s migration review says “international education is a new engine of economic growth for Australia and an important part of our social fabric. However, growth in the sector needs to be promoted through integrity and quality, and students and graduates need to be better supported to realise their economic potential in the labour market.”
Labor will not cap the number of students coming to study in Australia, or introduce extra fees, but it will instead aim to cull the intake via a number of measures aimed at ensuring that student visas will be granted only to those with the best chances of eventually filling gaps in the local jobs market.
Phil Honeywood, chief executive of the International Education Association of Australia, said the plan to toughen up English standards among would-be foreign students, as previously revealed by The Australian, would bring Australia into line with comparable countries such as the US, Canada and Britain.
“Provided the government focuses on the back-end of the student journey, which involves many students staying here for too long after they graduate, then we are supportive of an emphasis on the quality of students over quantity,” Mr Honeywood said.
The government “has had to resolve issues such as the legacy of uncapped work rights,” he said.
“These two legacy policies led to thousands of non-genuine students coming into the country when the borders were finally opened.”
The Albanese government’s long-awaited strategy, to be released on Monday, comes amid an unprecedented surge in foreign student numbers that has been blamed for placing intense pressure on local infrastructure, including the already stretched housing market.
Mr Honeywood said it was unfair to blame foreign students for social ills such as too-high rents, when numbers were only 2 per cent above pre-pandemic levels.
For those students already here, the government has committed to a range of measures aimed at ensuring foreigners do not “hop” between visas in order to stay working in Australia, such as by restricting temporary graduate visa holders from transferring back to student visas in order to prolong their stay.
Following on from the March Nixon review into the exploitation of the visa system, the migration strategy will give an additional $19m to the Department of Home Affairs’ student visa integrity unit to crack down on dodgy providers, including so-called “ghost schools”, where non-genuine students allegedly maintain enrolment without attending classes.
While many of the measures in the migration strategy are likely to be supported by industry experts, international students who spoke with The Australian about the proposed crackdown on student visas said they felt they were being made scapegoats.
Karanbir Sethi, a 21-year-old Indian international student at UTS, said “personally, I feel I’m being targeted”.
Mr Sethi said reducing the continuing visa options for graduates would affect him “harshly”.
“That’s not something we were expecting or would ever want to happen,” he said.
Mr Sethi said Australia was a popular university destination back home because of the availability of post-study visas.
“That’s going to affect the number of international students coming into Australia.”
His friend, Pruthvi Shah, 21, concurred.
“I’m personally very agitated with that,” he said.
Mr Shah, also from India, said he thought a shorter stay in Australia would reduce his chances of being able to migrate permanently.
“For me, education was just the beginning – to arrive into a country which is much more privileged and it gives us the opportunity to, maybe, start a new life here,” he said.
“And if they want to cut that down, just saying that you should only be here because you came here to study … if I come here and after four years I want to pursue something other than my studies, I think that’s a good thing.”
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