Australia recently announced that it plans to cap international student enrollment at 2.7 million by 2025. This decision was announced a few months ago and was blocked by the Liberals and Greens during the last sitting days of the Parliament, the Australian government has now announced that the federal government will try to reduce the number of international students by ordering a “go-slow” in the visa process, once applications are received at each university. After reaching the target for
The new Ministerial Directive 111 (MD111) will now divide student visas into two categories: ‘High Priority’ and ‘Standard Priority’. All universities will receive high priority processing up to 80 percent of their cap, after which the ‘standard priority’ process will begin.
It is a replacement for the controversial Ministerial Direction 107 (MD107) which was implemented in December 2023, and prioritized the visa process for students from ‘low-risk’ sandstone universities and ‘low-risk’ countries.
“So we’re very upfront about that, it’s going to prioritize visas for students going to those regional and smaller universities, which is what we want to do through that legislation, and it’s going to help us manage international student numbers. As we’ve said, the number of people coming to Australia has contributed to significant growth,” said Federal Finance Minister Katie Gallagher. Australian media.
This decision has not gone down well with all experts as some believe that these constant changes may confuse international students who want to study higher in Australia. They also fear that these ‘misleading’ changes could make Australia look unattractive to aspirants.
Vicki Thomson, chief executive of the Group of Eight, which represents Australia’s eight largest research universities, believes that “with every Australian university setting targets for international admissions by 2025, it makes no sense to apply immediate government support to visa processing only. up to 80% of that target.”
The experts also added that this sudden change in policies ‘seems designed to leave a significant budget hole for Australian universities without financial compensation’.
“In the absence of a statutory cap, the government has set a ‘priority threshold’ – the basis of which is unclear. Even more surprising is the fact that the direction allows the process to slow down when this threshold reaches 80 per cent – not the absolute threshold. There is no statutory basis for determining the number of international students. Even our universities set their budgets based on the numbers provided by the government a few months ago. Now, a few days before the end of the year, and with little apparent logic, this number has shifted again Six,” Vicky added.
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