Update on my analysis of the international student caps

In the last 4 weeks since my appearance at the Senate hearing into the ESOS Act changes – there have been the following developments:

• a provider which wasn’t on my original list (no suspension or cancellation decisions by ASQA at the time) and which has a cap of 640 students for 2025 has closed its doors. DEWR data shows they enrolled 885 new students in 2023 and a further 114 to the end of July 2024 (who are currently being placed with other providers)
• a dual sector provider which was on my list and was told it wouldn’t be able to use the cap for its international higher education students until TEQSA lifted a suspension decision (but it was fine to use its VET cap despite being cancelled by ASQA) has been in the Administrative Review Tribunal appealing the TEQSA and ASQA decisions. Initially the Tribunal ruled ASQA’s cancellation decision would be stayed on the condition that the provider couldn’t enrol any new students (quite how they would use their VET student caps would have been an interesting question), but then last week after another hearing the ART vacated the stay request – meaning ASQA’s cancellation decision is now in force, ie the provider has to close its VET operations. So not only is the provider’s VET student cap for next year (just 33 students) going to need to be reallocated, but Departmental records show they enrolled 100 new VET students in the last 2 years who will need to be placed with other providers
• another provider has just lodged an ART appeal against an ASQA cancellation decision. They were not on my previous list given the timing of the decision against them and their new appeal. They have a cap of 149 students for 2025, and
• thanks to new functionality on the training.gov.au website we can now (once again) track ASQA cancellation decisions daily. The TGA website shows there are another two providers which were given caps for 2025 and because of the recency of the cancellation decisions against them they were not in my earlier analysis of cancelled providers being allocated new students. They both have small caps for 2025 (30 students and 1 student)

What does this mean? Collectively about 680 VET student places for 2025 need to be reallocated (providers at dot points 1 and 2 above), and a further 180 VET student places are in jeopardy – as they have been allocated to providers whose registration has now been canclled.

Officials need to rethink their methodologies so that they prevent cancelled/suspended providers from getting new students unless and until the regulatory decision against them is overturned.

Doing so would give international students the same rights and protections as domestic students.

I cannot understand why it is ok to tell international students to save up thousands of dollars, leave their families and come to Australia to study at a college the regulator is closing down, but for domestic students when a government-funded provider gets a bad audit report (and well before they go through the full ASQA cancellation and appeals process) the government agency moves the students immediately to a new provider and withdraws the provider’s funding contract.

The same approach should apply for international students. After all the ESOS Act is designed to offer extra protections to international students – and yet we have a methodology for the 2025 student caps which offers international students less protection than domestic students.

It is entirely reasonable for government to include an additional criterion in their caps methodology – eg “a provider will be given a cap of zero new students if it is has had its registration suspended or cancelled by ASQA or TEQSA.”

Making this change would formalise the decision already taken in relation to the above provider suspended by TEQSA, and bring the same rigour to cap allocations in VET. It would also put international students on an equal footing with domestic students.