The University of Wollongong has commenced withdrawing the Confirmation of Enrolment of students who are “unlikely to meet new criteria to obtain a positive visa outcome.”
The Koala obtained the following attachments:
A Confirmation of Enrolment or eCOE is a document that CRICOS registered providers, those institutions who are registered to provide courses to international students, issue students via the Australian Government’s PRISM’s system to alert visa officers that they are bona fide students and have met the criteria for entry into their institution. Visa officers can check that the document has been issued via their access to the system.
On receiving the attachments, the Koala approached the University of Wollongong, and the following response was received attributed to a university spokesperson:
Over 1.4 million local and international students choose to study in Australia each year, at Australian universities – that rank among the world’s best. International education is Australia’s largest services export, and the rich tapestry of cultural exchange and value that international students bring to Australia is immeasurable.
For Australia’s continued growth and success, it is imperative that the international student applications that Australian universities receive are of the highest quality and within this context, that the Australian Government Department of Home Affairs (DoHA) along with each University, aims to ensure each student application to study at an Australian University is genuine.
DoHA maintains strict rules that ensure the university sector in Australia is able to ensure genuine students enter Australia to study, and provides rigorous data, trends and entry requirements to universities to help manage this risk.
The University of Wollongong (UOW) works in strict alignment with DoHA guidance and continuously monitors compliance risks, as a standard and embedded practice within its university admissions process and international agent management. DoHA visa outcome monitoring recently identified an elevated risk of non-genuine applications, and UOW is adjusting processes related to admission and genuine temporary entrant screening processes in response to this.
This continuous monitoring and adjustment activity is a normal approach across the Australian university sector–where international students play an important role–not just due to the contribution international students make to the Australian economy, but also the significant contribution international students make to Australia’s social and cultural capital.
UOW maintains communication with students where any refund is needed. All refunds are processed according to our refund policy.
The Koala is aware other universities are considering the move.
This marks a significant shift, as the Koala understands many institutions are now considering their place in the Simplified Student Visa Framework (SSVF), whereby institutions that record rejections are downgraded, impacting their ability to recruit international students.
The Koala’s research indicates that at 82.5%, the overall grant rate for Q4 of 2023 was the lowest since records began in 2005. The three largest sectors, HE, VET, and ELICOS, all individually experienced the lowest grant rates since 2005.
Compared to Q4 of 2019 (the last Q before the borders shut for Covid), in 2023, these top three sectors saw 8% more visas being considered for a grant, but it saw 119% more applications rejected. Importantly, while much of the government’s rhetoric in their responses to the many immigration inquiry reports have been aimed at ghost colleges in the Vocational Education sector and while VET is certainly experiencing record high levels of rejections, the HE sector has seen the largest rise in rejections.
In Q4 of 2023, the number of visas processed for HE students was one-third higher – up 33% from just below 49,000 to just below 65,000 student visa applications. However, the number of rejections was more than triple – up 236% from just over 3,000 to well over 10,000. Of these rejections, 65% were applications from India and Nepal, which both saw triple the number of rejections in Q4 of 2023 compared to Q4 2019 despite the number of applications being only 12% higher.
These are troubling times for the sector.
