Integrity problems persist in Australian international education, and anyone who expects Canberra to put up with them is in “dreamland”, a Melbourne conference has heard.
Assistant international education minister Julian Hill said a ream of issues – including passport fraud, onshore poaching and unethical recruitment – continued to plague the industry.
“It’s very clear that there is misuse in parts of the sector,” Hill told the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (Teqsa) conference. “We are not going to sit by if we see emerging integrity risks.
“If anyone thinks that this government…would sit on our hands and do nothing when we see inappropriate use of the visa system, then they’ve got rocks in their heads.”
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He said the Department of Home Affairs had begun “sampling” the English language capabilities of “large quantities” of student visa applicants from South Asia. Officials would also scrutinise paperwork for signs that the applicants were not genuine students.
Hill has also instructed the department to obtain “a statistically valid sample” of the characteristics of Chinese students in Group of Eight universities, to test “community feedback” about their suitability.
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He warned that the government would consider adjusting institutional risk ratings “out of cycle” if new problems emerged. Risk ratings are normally set in March and September.
The department was also examining the financial viability of independent colleges that were being “held to ransom” by Australian education agents. “They’re effectively cash-flowing their existence by kicking the can down the road,” he told the conference. “That’s not sustainable.”
A bill before parliament gives the government new powers to crack down on unethical behaviour in international education. A Senate committee inquiring into its provisions is due to report on 24 November.
Hill said he wanted the bill to pass the same week. Many of its measures had already been green-lighted during an inquiry into an earlier version of the bill, before it was torpedoed by a “noalition” of the Liberal Party and the Greens.
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He said the proposals had drawn on “multiple reviews” including former Victorian police commissioner Christine Nixon’s examination of criminal abuse in the student visa system, and a long-running inquiry by the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, in which he had participated.
“We spent a couple of years…listening carefully, and the recommendations were thoughtful,” he told the conference. “These reforms are not capricious. [They] overwhelmingly should have passed the parliament 12 months ago. I want them to have a significant impact. The integrity issues are still there.”
He defended a particularly controversial measure empowering the education and skills ministers to cancel programmes at private universities and colleges, describing it as a “reserve power” to deal with “a small number of very dodgy courses”.
“The system couldn’t run without ministerial intervention powers. They’ll be properly used. The key…is the right safeguards and absolute transparency. We’re not going to see someone wandering around like Barbarella, kind of randomly shooting things.”
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Hill conceded that he had initially held misgivings about a new proposal to require Teqsa approval of transnational education delivery but had been “comforted” when he grasped the detail.
“We’re trying to…make sure that the regulator simply has a line of sight to what you’re doing offshore,” he told the conference. “That’s in everyone’s interest. If one provider does one dumb thing in a market, it can wreck the reputation for everyone.”
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