‘Nuclear’ options needed to stamp out student work scams

Australian agencies would establish a “red flag” system to identify suspicious “visa hopping” by foreign students, under reforms being considered by a parliamentary group.

The Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, which is enquiring into the post-Covid state of Australia’s international education and tourism industries, has heard that tough action is needed to tackle college-based work scams.

Concern largely centres around students enrolling with universities to boost their chances of obtaining visas, coming to Australia and then switching to cheaper vocational education and training (VET) colleges with lax attendance standards.

Some gravitate to “ghost schools” where there are “very few students to be seen”, a 16 May hearing of the committee was told.

Committee member Julian Hill said foreign students who switched from degrees to vocational courses were obliged to obtain fresh visas as an “integrity check”. But this requirement was “never, ever” enforced.

Phil Honeywood, chief executive of the International Education Association of Australia, said the receiving colleges were sometimes registered to provide both higher and vocational qualifications. In such cases, the requirement to renew visas was not applied even though the “poached” students did not undertake degree-level studies at their new institutions.

“There are many ways around this [rule], and that’s why it happens all the time,” Mr Honeywood said.

In a 15 May discussion paper, the committee has proposed better “onshore monitoring” and information sharing by educational institutions, the Department of Home Affairs, higher education regulator Teqsa and VET regulator Asqa.

“If there is a spike in transfers from one provider to another – especially from higher education to VET – this could prompt a system red flag to have a closer examination of the transferring students by Home Affairs, and a cross-notification to Teqsa and Asqa to investigate,” it adds.

Such a system would necessitate changes to data management processes and better “resourcing” of the regulators, the paper concedes. But it says a focus on border integrity has allowed dodgy practices to flourish after students reach Australia, facilitated by the “auto-granting” of onshore visa changes.

“The best legislation is only as good as the regulatory application,” the paper says. “Australia needs to review…the weak points in the current framework…and be bold in delivering effective solutions…even if it risks the ‘bottom’ dollar.”

The committee heard that the government should consider “nuclear” options to stamp out unethical practices. They included barring some colleges from assessing their own students, and restricting delivery of courses thought to be favoured by students who were only in Australia to work.

“Is the country getting value out of allowing certificates and diplomas in marketing and leadership, [which] seem to have no vocational outcomes [or] migration pathways and seem to attract large numbers of students from certain countries?” Mr Hill asked.

Fellow committee member Deborah O’Neill stressed a need to “road test” visa arrangements, after a Nine media group investigation found that student visas had been exploited by people traffickers. “We absolutely need to know that criminals will be looking for a way to make money and to hurt people,” she told the hearing.

“We need some people with a degree in how to be fraudulent, who look at every single structure that we put in place, figure out how everybody’s going to game it [and] shut down some of the doors before they open.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com