Challenging to make the grade in international student visa overhaul

International students are set to face a higher bar of entry to get into Australia as part of a crackdown by government to stop visas being exploited as a backdoor to work.

University of Sydney business student Nicole Wong. Picture: John Feder

International students are set to face a higher bar of entry to get into Australia as part of a crackdown by government to stop visas being exploited as a backdoor to work.

The announcement was made as part of a milestone review of Australia’s migration system, which the federal government has labelled “broken” and “clunky”.

While weeding out non-genuine students from the pool of those looking to study in Australia, Home Affairs Minister Claire O’Neil declared pathways to permanency for high-achieving students needed to be sped up.

“We want to ensure that high-performing students, with the skills we need, are given the chance to stay. We propose creating simpler, faster pathways for the international students who will have special skills and capabilities we need,” she told the National Press Club on Thursday.

“But we also need to make sure our international student system has integrity … we will look at tightening the requirements for international students studying in Australia, and ensure that students are actually here to study.”

Nicole Wong – a 27-year-old from Hong Kong studying a Masters of Business Administration at the University of Sydney – said changes made by government that affected students getting working visas would determine whether she stayed in the country or not.

“For me right now, I’m still deciding whether I’m staying for certain. It mainly depends on the migration policy,” she said. “What I’ve heard from my classmates is it seems quite difficult for them to find a job after graduation from the previous cohort.”

Last year, half of the nation’s primary skilled permanent resident visa recipients were former international students and about 50 per cent of those who stayed in Australia after study ended up in jobs lower than their skill level.

Ms O’Neil singled out sectors including aged care, tech and engineering as those in dire need of more workers that could be fed in through a reformed migration system.

“Instead of pretending that some students are here to study when they are actually here to work, we need to look to create proper, capped, safe … pathways for workers in key sectors, such as care,” she said.

Navitas global head of insights and analytics, Jonathan Chew, said Australia had seen a “better than expected” return of international students after Covid because there was no limit on the hours they could work. A cap of 24 hours a week will be reintroduced in July. “Students (are) coming here, enrolling to study but perhaps either dropping out because they’ve got such great work opportunities … or perhaps for some of them, they had very little intent to actually study,” he said.

While welcoming the government’s intention to lift the bar on students coming into Australia, Mr Chew said the success of the policy would come down to enforcement, pointing to hundreds of Indian students deported from Canada last month for breaking visa conditions.

Group of Eight chief executive Vicki Thompson urged the government to consider creating a new “High Potential Individual Visa” that would help universities attract and retain the best students across the country.

“In the current global environment competition for international students and researchers is fierce, especially for those with specialist expertise in areas such as cyber security and artificial intelligence, those areas where Australia needs talent,” she said.

Opposition education spokeswoman Sarah Henderson said she could not yet see a coherent “plan” from the government to protect the integrity of the international education system.