Australia’s government has confirmed that it will pressure universities and colleges to comply with quotas in their foreign enrolments by introducing a “third lane” in its visa processing regime.  

The arrangements, outlined in a new ministerial directive, require visa processing staff to give very low priority to applications from students enrolled with institutions that have exceeded their following year’s allocations by 15 per cent.

Highest priority will continue to go to institutions that are yet to reach 80 per cent of their quotas for new overseas students. The current “slow” lane – for institutions that have exceeded the 80 per cent threshold, but not by a huge amount – will now become the middle lane.

The new arrangements, outlined in (MD115), take effect from 14 November.

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The assistant minister for international education, Julian Hill, said the new approach would “strengthen and balance” the distribution of overseas students.

Hill said the “managed growth approach”, applied through the current ministerial direction 111, had restored foreign student numbers to a “more sustainable” level. Growth had moderated, with student visa applications declining more than 26 per cent last year and the number of new overseas students falling 16 per cent.

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He said visa processing resources would now be reallocated “to support all education providers on an equitable basis”. Higher processing priority would go to institutions that “manage their international student enrolments broadly in accordance with their indicative allocations”.

The International Education Association of Australia said there was “nothing unexpected” in the “effectively updated” ministerial direction. “The key additional feature is inserting some discipline on providers who are over-enrolling above their limits,” said CEO Phil Honeywood. “This new priority three visa processing slower lane was expected to come in.”

Adherence to the government’s allocations has been patchy, with some universities well under their 2025 quotas and others exceeding them by as much as 50 per cent. Nine publicly funded universities were still at least 20 per cent below their allocations at the end of October, according to Department of Education , while the remaining 29 were close to or above their quotas.

Private higher education colleges mostly appeared to be ignoring their allocations. They had collectively been granted 31,000 places but already begun teaching 48,800 new overseas students and enrolled a further 6,600.

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Vocational education and training (VET) colleges, by contrast, were well below their collective quota of 93,000 places. Just 58,200 students had begun classes or received visas for future study.

Under the new arrangements, small VET colleges – those authorised to enrol 100 or fewer new students – will be bundled together under a combined “prioritisation threshold”. Overseas school and postgraduate research students, transnational education participants, people with government scholarships and people enrolled on stand-alone English language courses are among the groups that will continue to be exempt from the quotas.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com