Category: Attrition

The education minister should not have the power to cancel ‘classes of courses’ for international students

Andrew NortonLeave a comment

Update 28/11/2025: Last night the Senate passed the ESOS amendment bill with Coalition amendments. While I still believe this provision counts as very poor public policy – for reasons exanded up in my Senate inquiry submission – the Coalition changes do improve things somewhat. These are noted in the text below.

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The government is having another go at its 2024 Education Services for Overseas Students (ESOS) legislation, reintroducing it earlier this month minus the enrolment caps that saw it blocked in the Senate last November.

This post draws on and adds to things I wrote last year about proposed ministerial powers to suspend and cancel ‘classes of courses’.

The amendments discussed in this post were partly why I regarded the 2024 ESOS amendment bill as the single worst piece of higher education related legislation to come before the Parliament in my career.

What took it beyond standard bad policy was its use of broad ministerial discretion with minimal constraints on how it is exercised. That creates rule of law problems, making it hard to know in advance what the rules are. If passed, the amendments could lead to some education providers being arbitrarily punished for the actions of others.

Legislative references are to the section numbers of the ESOS Act 2000, as they are or as they would be if the bill passes unamended.

A mass course cancellation power

The bill gives the education minister power to simultaneously suspend or cancel multiple ESOS course registrations at multiple providers: division 1AB. It does this by making the unit of regulation a ‘class of courses’ – the definition of which is discussed below.

This mass cancellation power differs from existing laws that give the ‘ESOS agency’ (TEQSA in higher ed, ASQA in VET) power to suspend or cancel the registration of specific courses or specific providers: sections 83 to 92. It also differs from the current power of the immigration minister to issue a ‘suspension certificate’ to a provider. This can be done in specified circumstances such as fraud in visa applications, students breaching visa conditions, and other visa issues: sections 97 to 103.

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What explains delays in attrition?

Andrew Norton2 Comments

I was quoted at the weekend in a Herald-Sun article about attrition from Victorian universities. The journalist wanted to know how much HELP debt students typically have on drop-out, but unfortunately this data is not regularly published (it should be of course).

But based on some old Grattan analysis, which had actual data to the mid-2010s, the fact that first year is the most common year for attrition, and the strong link between part-time study and attrition, I thought that the typical $$$ figure may not be too high.

That said, average or median HELP debt on dropping out may have increased at a faster rate than indexation in the early 2020s. This is due to students spending more time enrolled before dropping out.

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