This week everyone’s eyes have been on Australia’s migration reforms – [Issue 281 – Australia Migration Weekly] Minister for Home Affairs: the migration reform report will be released before 9 May!The review kicked off last September; more than half a year on, we’ll finally see some results before 9 May.
But something many people may have overlooked is that, almost in the same breath, Australia’s higher education sector is also undergoing review and reform. Last November the Australian Federal Government launched what it describes as the first broad review and reform of the higher education system since 2008 recommendations.An interim report will be submitted to the government in June this year, and the final report will be delivered in December this year.
The timeline runs a little later, but the process is similar – it too calls for submissions from the public. Recently, the views and recommendations of some heavyweight players have started to emerge.
Universities Australia
, the peak body representing Australia’s universities, recently put forward its views. One important point is that Australia’s rate of retaining international students lags behind competing study destinations, with only 16% going on to obtain permanent residency (this figure may be off, or perhaps it only counts the portion of student visas that convert directly to migration-class visas?)
Universities Australia blames this talent drain on the migration system, calling the current settings “too complex” and a barrier to skilled workers and researchers.
They have a bold idea: they recommend scrapping the GTE requirement for student visas (mainly for higher education courses).
They also recommend that all international students should automatically receive a graduate work visa if they meet the course requirements and the relevant character requirements.
Independent Higher Education Australia (IHEA)
is also calling for changes to the migration system – broadly, it wants more pathways to permanent residency for those who complete Australian higher education.
They also made one recommendation we’d give a manual thumbs-up to: “fees should only be charged once an application is approved.”
Of course, what we’d really like to add is: compared with the tuition fees charged by the university heavyweights, the student visa fee charged by the Department of Home Affairs is really quite modest – would the heavyweights consider offering a discount?
Group of Eight (Go8)
On top of this, there’s the matter of university funding – the Go8 universities are all calling on the government to provide more financial support. The Go8 Chief Executive said: “the current research system, which survives on international student tuition revenue, is unsustainable.”
First of all, thank you to the university representatives for speaking up on behalf of international students. We absolutely support the call to give international students more PR pathways. It’s just that the universities’ proposals may be a touch more idealistic – for example, the Subclass 485 / Graduate Work visa is about to be relaxed right after 1 July (Big news! A large number of fields such as IT, engineering and medicine will be able to get a longer Subclass 485 period – at least 4 years!). From the universities’ point of view, using this to attract prospective students makes perfect sense, but if the bar keeps being lowered and the pathways keep being widened,is it possible that having no threshold at all could instead lead to even fiercer competition?
It’s worth noting that these higher-education bodies are also taking part in the migration review mentioned at the start of this article. We’ve set up [Stay-Across-the-Migration-Reforms Group], where we’ll share the latest news.
Catch up on past articles
April Tasmania seminar I State officials say they’ll try to issue more invitations – hinting at easing?
Hit with a 3-year bar due to visa cancellation / overstay / fraudulent documents – can you still apply for PR?
Victoria’s latest invitation round: IT at a base score of 75 securing a Subclass 190, accounting at 85 points!
Migration News Group
2023
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