Category: International students

How much difference will stopping student visa applications from people on visitor visas make?

Andrew Norton2 Comments

The bad news for international education keeps coming. On Wednesday the government announced that onshore visitor visa holders would no longer be able to apply for a student visa. It also announced a 1 July 2024 implementation date for the ban on temporary graduate visa holders applying for a student visa. The temporary graduate visa policy was announced last December.

How big is the visitor visa change?

The government’s media release says that 36,000 onshore visitor visa holders applied for a student visa in the financial year to May 2024. However the number of visas granted will be much lower than that. As of the end of April 2024 13,733 primary applicant student visas had been granted to onshore visitor visa holders in 2023-24. Secondary visa holders – partners and children – take the number to 17,729.

These numbers are for all levels of education. Higher education primary applicants are about a quarter of the total for this time period. In 2023-24 up to April 3,332 higher student visas grants were made for primary applicants, with secondary applicants taking the total to 4,742.

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A cap-and-trade system for international student places

Andrew Norton2 Comments

In an earlier post I argued that the government’s plans to cap international student numbers, including by education provider and course, would cause actual enrolments to fall well below the official maximum number.

This is due to the inherent weaknesses of bureaucratic systems of student place allocation. Even when meeting demand is a goal the limited information held by central planners, and the long time lags between allocations and enrolments, will cause student places to remain unused.

This post proposes a partial remedy to this problem, a cap-and-trade system for international student places.

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The legal detail of the government’s plans to cap international student numbers

Andrew Norton1 Comment

In an earlier post I criticised the government’s plans to cap international students by education provider and course.

This post goes through the capping legal detail of the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024, which if passed would amend the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000.

The amending bill contains other provisions on education agents and education providers designed to limit misconduct in the international student market. This post does not cover these provisions, but Tracy Harris discusses them here.

In this summary, unless specified otherwise, the sections mentioned refer to the amending bill but use the section number as it would appear, if passed, in a revised compilation of the ESOS Act 2000. I also refer to the bill’s explanatory memorandum, which explains the intent behind some provisions. It can be downloaded from the bill’s webpage. The Parliamentary Library’s bills digest is also helpful.

Italicised phrases other than section headings highlight powers that give the minister wide discretion. I see this as a significant problem over-and-above the direct consequences of capping.

On what can international student enrolment limits be imposed?

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Limits on international student numbers could reduce enrolments to well below the official cap

Andrew Norton3 Comments

I am not opposed to changing international student migration rules and education provider requirements to moderate problems long associated with international education, including “dodgy” colleges, inadequate student preparation, student poverty, student exploitation and “permanently temporary” migration.

Multiple steps towards minimising these problems have already been announced or taken, with increased financial requirements for a student visa added last week. Most changes announced before last Saturday are justifiable.

But capping international student numbers including down to a course level, as announced over the weekend, is a bad move.

The caps will face all the problems I have identified with bureaucratic allocation of domestic student funding. Because numbers will be allocated between universities and courses according to a politician or bureaucrat’s view of where students should enrol, rather than where students want to enrol, actual enrolments are likely to be well below the capped level.

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Reducing the number of ‘permanently temporary’ former international students

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While I agree with the goals of today’s big migration policy changes, they will make life more difficult for universities relying on migration-motivated international students. In most cases, former international students will be able to stay in Australia on temporary graduate visas for less time than now. Other options for remaining in Australia, such as returning to a student visa, will become more difficult.

These policy changes aim to reduce temporary migrant numbers. The pressure temporary migrants place on accommodation and other services made this an urgent policy and political issue. But prior to this there were also significant concerns about temporary migrants themselves, in their vulnerability to labour market exploitation and prolonging their time in Australia in the often false hope of eventual permanent residence, as ‘permanently temporary’ migrants. The Parkinson migration review, released in March this year, set out an agenda for change.

Future policy on permanent residence is still under development, with some signals discussed below. Whether the number of former international students getting PR will go down remains to be seen. But clearer rules will mean PR aspirants can cut their losses at an earlier point. Fewer will delay important career and family events and decisions due to uncertainty about their long-term country of residence.

Shorter-stay temporary graduate visas

In September 2022 the government announced its decision to add two years to the sub-class 485 temporary graduate visa for graduates with degrees in areas of ‘verified skill shortages’. In the critique I wrote at the time I was ‘far from convinced that a 485 time extension is a good or ethical policy’, and so I am glad that this policy will be abolished.

As the chart below from the migration plan shows, they will also cut the base time period for a masters by coursework from three years to two years, and for a PhD from four years to three years. The regional extension, however, will remain.

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Mapping Australian higher education 2023 – official release

Andrew Norton2 Comments

Update 20/12/2025: More recent data here.

Mapping Australian higher education 2023 is now available from the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods website.

Update 30/10/2024: There is a later version of Mapping 2023’s data here.

Update 26/10/23: A reader has pointed out that list of FEE-HELP NUHEPs is incomplete. A column of names from the original Excel file was omitted during production. The full list is available here. This list also includes three non-FEE-HELP providers registered by TEQSA since the pdf version was finalised. A corrected version of Mapping with the full list of NUHEPs, as of mid-2023, is here.

If anyone has noticed other errors please let me know.

For universities the Accord interim report proposes a more extreme version of Job-Ready Graduates

Andrew Norton6 Comments

The Australian Universities Accord interim report recommends overturning the most controversial Job-ready Graduates policy, using student contribution price signals to guide student course choices.

But overall the Accord interim report and Job-ready Graduates have strong parallels. They both take a utilitarian view of higher education, that its purpose is to provide benefits to others rather than being of any intrinsic value. Universities exist to meet skills needs, find practical uses for research, contribute to their local communities, and promote equity. The main difference is the interim report proposals are, with student contributions the main exception, more extreme and interventionist than Job-ready Graduates.

Substantially reduced university autonomy

Historically universities in Australia and other western countries have operated with a significant degree of autonomy from government. But despite using the word ‘autonomy’ a few times the Accord interim report shows little interest in this idea.

On my count at least 25 interim report proposals would reduce the scope of university-level decision making or are new reporting requirements that set universities up for future regulation. In my list these cover general mission direction, student admissions, the mix of disciplines and courses, curriculum and teaching, use of funds, and accountability.

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Conflicting visions of higher education’s purposes

Andrew Norton3 Comments

I blurbed Mind of the Nation, Michael Wesley’s new book on universities in Australian life, with the statement that it ‘shows how rising and conflicting expectations of universities create controversies that will not go away’. His book is about the cultural and political position of universities rather than higher education policy as such, although policy provides evidence of how politicians and voters see universities.

University administrators – Wesley is a deputy vice-chancellor – are at the centre of these controversies, blamed by all sides for whatever is wrong with universities. Mind of the Nation explores why universities receive so much critique and so little love or (from a university perspective) public funding, despite many successes and contributions: life-changing experiences for students, moving from an elite to a mass higher education system, creating a new export industry, large increases in research aimed at solving practical problems, and engagement with local communities.

Wesley asks why Australians admire the successes of their sporting teams, musicians and actors but not universities.

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Extending the 485 visa by two years will exacerbate the problems of Australia’s temporary migration program

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“…migration should not simply be about bringing in workers in to fill gaps, it should be about helping people put down roots, to join in the life of our country towns and suburbs. To make a home, to raise a family, to join our Australian family – strengthening our economy and our great multicultural society.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Jobs and Skills Summit, 2 September 2022

The rise of temporary migration

Thirty years ago Anthony Albanese’s statement would have restated migration orthodoxy. Australia rejected the ‘guest worker’ model of Germany or Singapore or the Gulf states. Most long-term migrants were permanent residents on arrival, with pathways to citizenship. While over time policy moved from assimilation to multiculturalism, the expectation that most ‘join our Australian family’ was a constant.

But from the mid-1990s temporary multi-year visa migration became more common. Major categories included international students, skilled workers and later temporary graduate visas. Working holiday visas and the long-standing open border with New Zealand also increased non-tourist resident numbers. Their total population peaked at 1.7 million in 2019 but fell to 1.2 million during COVID border closures before starting to recover.

Permanent migration is now typically a two step process. In 2018-19, before COVID, 68 per cent of primary applicants for skilled migration were already in Australia; the 85 per cent in 2020-21 will probably come down with reopened borders. Including partner and family migrants 65 per cent of permanent migrants were onshore applicants in 2020-21.

The problems of temporary migration

Temporary migrants freely choose Australia, but life is not easy for them. They are vulnerable to exploitation in the labour market. They pay taxes but are ineligible for most government benefits (although from mid-2021 they did get disaster payments.) Temporary migrants could never vote and have had other political rights reduced.

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The bust then boom in tertiary education student employment under COVID-19

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In the major 2020 and 2021 lockdowns tertiary student employment in the 24 years and under age group fell by over 100,000, or 20 per cent of the pre-lockdown total. Yet these losses proved to be temporary. As I discuss in a new paper, student employment rates and earnings recovered to record levels. While the strong Australian labour market is obviously a major factor, the sometimes significantly overlapping employment markets for students and temporary migrants made closed borders beneficial for students as workers.

Tertiary student employment rates

The strength of tertiary student employment is most obvious in employment rates, the percentage of the total student population with a job. Tertiary student employment levels and rates vary during the year, driven by movements in and out of both employment and enrolment. Comparisons of the same month in different years can help distinguish a trend from a normal seasonal change. December is not necessarily the peak month for total student employment, since course completions reduce student numbers. But student employment rates typically reach annual highs in December, as seasonal spikes in retail employment coincide with a summer holiday increase in student capacity to work.

As the chart below shows, employment rates fell sharply in April and May 2020 as lockdowns hit, but by August 2020 student employment rates were back at 2019 levels. In 2021 employment rates were consistently higher than in 2019, despite lockdowns in NSW, Victoria and the ACT causing a significant dip. In early 2022 student employment rates remain 10 percentage points or more above their 2019 levels.

Source: ABS Labour force detailed, table LM3
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