By A Learned Reader
The Department of Home Affairs issues an international risk framework, the Simplified Student Visa Framework, “designed to provide an incentive for education providers to recruit genuine students who are less likely to have negative immigration outcomes.”
In essence, the framework assesses both countries and universities on past performance and provides a rating for each. It both rewards and penalises institutions for recruiting genuine, or unintentionally recruiting non-genuine students. The non-genuine category includes fraud-related refusals, non-fraud related refusals, on-shore immigration ‘trailing’ risks, rate of visa cancellations, over-stayers and subsequent protection-visa applications.
A restructured dataset is expected for the next announcement in March, which will add on-shore data to the existing offshore information.
The SSVF system creates a matrix of countries and universities and provides an overview of what level of documentation is needed to support an application from an international student, according to their homeland and the institution they are applying to. The tool is here.
While the government does not release a schedule of institution rankings, information checked against industry data indicates 18 public universities are rated the top Level One, 17 are at Level Two.
On the country-side, the big movers seem to be India and Nepal which are downgraded.
This will have no impact for Level One universities recruiting students from either market. However, Indian and Nepalese students applying to Level Two universities will now need to additionally demonstrate they meet English language requirements and provide evidence of financial capacity via sufficient funds for travel costs and 12 months of living and tuition fees (plus additions for dependants). While students have always had to meet institutions’ English proficiency requirements these will now be over-sighted by the department as part of the visa requirement.
Level One institutions may receive a few more Indian and Nepalese applications in the coming months.