Naresh Gulati is the CEO of Ascent One and penned an Op-Ed for the Australian entitled “Australia’s international student visa system is broken but it can be fixed” on 12 June. The Koala sat down with Gulati to explore his opinions further.
In sitting down with Gulati he clearly expresses that integrity issues within the visa are not widespread but there are providers “gaming” the system and that these needed to be “weeded out”. However, the current reactive response being implemented by the government is ultimately doomed to failure. “It doesn’t address the right issues” he says.
“What we need instead is a more proactive approach that delivers lasting benefits for Australia’s higher education.”
So what are the issues?
Agents and their performance
Starting with the basics, he says “Education providers are accountable for agent performance, but they don’t currently have the tools needed to do the required proactive monitoring and ongoing management.”
Take the agent aggregator space. Gulati expresses that aggregators aren’t all bad, but there is a loophole that exists. “When providers work with aggregators, they do not have a direct relationship with the agents contracted by the aggregators – aggregators take on this role, depending on aggregator, providers may not even have clear visibility of their sub-agent networks. This means they have no contractual ability to penalise those who are guilty of dodgy practices, other than the aggregator themselves. With the size of the relationship this is unlikely.”
“In short, if an agent is terminated by an education provider, they may still be able to recruit students into the same provider via an aggregator.” He says.
He makes a good point. This needs thought.
Regulation
“The Australian Skills Quality Authority and the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency need to be more proactive. If the government makes it mandatory for the education providers to send data to these QA bodies on a regular basis, it will enable a swift regulatory action against the dodgy providers. This is what has been missing.”
He is right. An active, transparent regulator is what the sector needs.
Visa monitoring
“Associating visa-related rates (ie. approvals, cancellations and withdrawals) with education providers would require the introduction of a more transparent visa system, which providers could also use to attract the right kind of students. Modernisation of the Provider Registration and International Student Management System (PRISMS) is a step in the right direction.” He notes this also requires big investment.
His suggestions:
A visa system that is transparent and supports providers and students
Currently, providers are responsible for their risk rating with the Department of Home Affairs but have few levers to pull in proactively managing their cohort in a visa context. Gulati recommends an overhaul here. The visa requirements should be transparent and measurable. Once this is in place, it will allow the providers to attract the right students who only meet their admissions requirements also the government’s visa requirements.
Students who want to change providers or downgrade their qualifications should reapply for visas.
To further support providers, Gulati recommends that students who wish to change sectors or providers should need to reapply for their visa. This will certainly act as a big deterrent for the students “jumping ship” and solve the problem of “onshore student poaching” by dodgy providers.
First year living costs be deposited into an Australian bank account prior to arrival
With emphasis on the past few years supporting the economy and encouraging work fulltime to support the economy Australia has sent the wrong messages abroad. To address the use of fraudulent documentation by some dodgy agents and students, the students should be asked to deposit their first-year tuition fee and living expenses into a government approved bank account. This will make student’s financial ability assessment quicker and easier for both providers and DHA.
