In a letter to Ministers Claire O’Neil from Home Affairs and Jason Clare from Education, 16 Vice Chancellors have warned of the financial damage to the University sector and estimated this at AUD $310m across the 16 signatory Universities.
David Crowe from the Sydney Morning Herald published a piece today entitled “Foreign student visa rejections to cost unis $310m this year” – it is a great read and can be seen here.
Excerpts include:
“Given the ongoing recovery from the impacts of COVID-19, this situation is particularly alarming,” they wrote.
“The 16 institutions endorsing this letter conservatively estimate a collective revenue downturn of approximately $310 million in 2024 alone, akin to the impact of the pandemic.”
O’Neil said in a statement the migration strategy had to bring the intake down to the levels seen before the pandemic.
“Change is hard, and we’ll work with providers to help them navigate the new system,” she said.
“Migration is too high. Our goal is very clear. We are returning migration to pre-COVID levels, and applying proper integrity to student visa applications is critical to doing that.”
Within the story Nick Klomp, Vice Chancellor at CQUniversity makes the savvy point:
good universities were being “caught in the crossfire” of the migration strategy.
“The situation is now urgent, with university semesters about to commence and thousands of genuine student visa applications – and a $29 billion export industry – hanging in the balance,” he said.
“Australian universities are uniformly world-class; we need to level the playing field to ensure all Australian public universities receive priority processing of genuine international students.”
Level playing field indeed
A source close to The Koala has indicated that DoHA didn’t realise how much of an issue applications from level 2 institutions were and is now looking to push them through. Originally, these were anticipated to take approximately eight weeks. The Koala believes the advice is that students should be applying eight weeks out.
The Koala is also aware that study abroad applications, those visiting for six months – think semester exchange, are also being caught up in the mess up. These are applications from North America and Europe. This may or may not be due to an automation that was implemented in December.
The Koala has seen multiple forums globally, which now indicate that the visa slowdown is biting and that students should either apply to Australia much earlier or seek another destination.
Policy intent v what’s happening
Another source believes the gap between policy intent and implementation is growing. Where a slowdown doesn’t appear to be occurring but rather moving into rejections. Strategically, the government has been all about clearer pathways for the students, but things are opaque at the moment, and that is causing many issues. The example of the twin sisters, where one received a visa and the other didn’t, underscores this.
In short, there absolutely needs to be transparency around the visa application process and at the moment there is not.
