The official warnings identify the most concerning conduct by colleges that bring thousands of students into the country each year,telling the owners they will lose their licences within six months if they do not improve their operations.
Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Cybersecurity Clare O’Neil.Alex Ellinghausen
The sanctions follow other federal actions that have cut offshore student visa grants to 223,000 since July,putting the program on track to fall from the intake of 370,000 last financial year.
The government believes the student intake passed a key point in March when the numbers fell below the level seen before the pandemic,with 68,540 visa grants in the first quarter of this year compared with 68,960 in the same period in 2019.
Months after this masthead revealed the rise of “ghost colleges” that attract offshore visa holders who want to work rather than undertake genuine study,the new letters clear the way for legal sanctions against providers with poor track records.
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil has angered universities and colleges by telling department officials to raise the benchmarks for approving student visas,sparking claims that higher education providers will lose at least $300 million in revenue.
“Dodgy providers have no place in our international education sector,” O’Neil said in a statement.
“These actions will help weed out the bottom feeders in the sector that seek to exploit people and trash the reputation of the sector.”
The new warnings to private colleges,including official letters to 34 providers,step up the federal effort to turn away non-genuine students despite the reaction from the sector.
The letters tell the providers they have six months to significantly improve their behaviour or risk being issued with suspension certificates that would ban them from recruiting more international students. Those who breach the suspensions would be exposed to sanctions,including up to two years in prison.
Coalition immigration spokesman Dan Tehan has accused the government of running a “big Australia” policy by letting net overseas migration rise to 518,000 last financial year,.
The government will update its forecasts in the federal budget on May 14 after promising to reduce the overall intake to the levels seen before the pandemic.
The warning letters were sent to 34 colleges in the lowest of the three tiers the government uses to rank providers by their history,with major universities in the top tier. The 34 colleges had 32,000 student applications last year and 17,000 refusals,indicating the government’s concern about non-genuine students.
While the government would not name the colleges because it may have to launch legal action against them,it said eight were in central Melbourne,eight in central Sydney and eight in western Sydney,with the remainder elsewhere.
The chief executive of the Independent Tertiary Education Council of Australia,Troy Williams,criticised O’Neil last month for making a “radical shift” in migration policy that would cost thousands of jobs.
“The Home Affairs minister’s migration policy is poised to dismantle a thriving industry,which has historically contributed billions in export revenue,” he said.
University vice-chancellors have also criticised the government’s crackdown,warning it would cost their institutions,but this has not changed the policy.
Government officials estimated earlier this year that they could reduce the international student visa grants from 370,000 last financial year to 290,000 this year,but the latest figures suggest they may reach 270,000 instead.
“The migration system we inherited was completely broken,and our goal is to build a smaller,better planned,more strategic migration system that works for Australia,” O’Neil said in a statement.
“We are significantly reducing migration levels – we are in the middle of the biggest drop in migration numbers in Australia’s history,outside of war or pandemic.”
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