In a letter to its recruitment partners yesterday, CQUniversity announced further tightening of admissions settings to proactively take steps to address escalating visa refusals across the sector.
The letter was obtained by the Koala and can be seen below.
This new approach by universities to adjust admission requirements is not based on the potential of students to succeed academically but rather makes calculations on who may or may not succeed through a volatile and inconsistent visa regime.
In layman’s terms, imagine if the University of Sydney did an analysis on their cohort of students and realised that a certain demographic of students had a higher dropout rate than others and consequently penalised all students from that demographic by not offering places to them. Sounds rough right? What if the government incentivised them to do it?
This is the situation we face internationally. Universities are categorised in the Streamline Student Visa Framework (SSVF) on metrics such as visa cancellations and refusals. With refusals increasing in an inconsistent manner in recent months, universities are now employing strategies such as this to ensure their place in the system isn’t lowered. Once it is it makes it harder for universities to recruit students.
The sad thing is that one can’t blame CQUniversity or any other university tinkering with their admissions requirements to anticipate future visa refusals. And, it is the poor student that feels the pain.
Shehan Thampapillai, Director International at CQUniversity, said, ”At CQUniversity we had already taken a number of steps in 2023 to address the spike in visa refusals we were seeing across the sector. However, over the past few months in 2024 our data has suggested other metrics that we need to put into place to curb visa refusals from Indian and Nepalese citizens applying offshore. Our decisions are data-driven and nuanced by country, so that we can reduce the impact we have on potential candidates across the globe who wish to study at CQUniversity”
The Streamline Student Visa Framework was set up to “help streamline student visa applications” according to Mike Ferguson former Immigration official, now PVC International at Charles Sturt University who was quoted in a Sydney Morning Herald story last week. “the simplified student visa framework had reached its use-by date after Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil in December told bureaucrats to prioritise visa processing for the least risky institutions. This had created a backlash throughout the sector and meant universities had to cancel enrolments.” He told the SMH.
The point The Koala wishes to reaffirm is that changes the participation in this SSVF system are taking away from the core value of education and access to education. We have seen in recent times many posts on social media globally advertising informal lists of universities which now clearly provide a rationale that some are easier to access than others.
While the Minister continues to bang on about dodgy colleges, we must remind ourselves that Universities in Australia are self-accredited, and Australia has a higher percentage of students and institutions (of our total system) in the top 500 Universities in the world than other countries.
Dividing them on a visa basis serves no purpose other than a political one.
