Education Minister Jason Clare announces increased post study work rights for international students graduating with “select” degrees “in areas of verified skills shortage”

PSWR for bachelors will double to four years, and increase by two for masters (to five) and PhDs (to six)

A working group will advise Mr Clare and Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil, “on the development of this and other relevant issues.”

Presumably including student working hours

The cap was “temporarily relaxed” in January but will be reinstated in June ’23. “The number of hours will be subject to consultation with a view to striking the right balance between work and study”

Advice will come from

The working group will include Commonwealth officials, industry group the Council of International Education, Universities Australia – and the National Tertiary Education Union. Yes, the comrades are in the policy tent.

They will advise next month.

Extended PSWR: good for Australian employers, maybe not all graduates  

If “verified skills shortage” refers to IT this will be a win all round.  In a new paper Ly Thi Tran (Deakin U) and colleagues report IT grads with PWSR get jobs that utilise their skills. There’s more to it than in-demand and transferable skills – IT is global game, with a cosmopolitan workforce.

But not so much for those with engineering and bized degrees, fields where employers prefer to hire people with permanent residency so that grads on PSWR can languish in work below their skills level.