Use unrefunded visa fees to pay for TNE, Canberra told

Australia’s government has been urged to use the unrefunded fees of unsuccessful student visa applicants to reduce the costs of courses delivered by Australian institutions in the students’ home countries.

Under the proposal, the government would use visa fee revenue to fund tuition discounts on Australian programmes delivered at university branch campuses or local partner institutions.

The approach would ensure that local people’s investments in paying Australia’s A$2,500 (£1,317) student visa application fee – a crippling sum for many families in countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal, where most applications for Australian student visas are rejected – was not lost to those families.

It would also help facilitate transnational education (TNE) programmes that were both economically viable for Australian institutions and affordable for local families.

The idea is the brainchild of Peter Waring, pro vice-chancellor of TNE at Murdoch University and dean of its Singapore campus. Waring said it was “immoral” for a wealthy country like Australia to pocket large sums from the unrealised aspirations of people in countries like Sri Lanka and Nepal.

“That money…represents many months of earnings, often, for those families,” Waring told Times Higher Education. “To stump up that money and get nothing in return, other than to donate it to the Australian government, seems to me to be incredibly unethical and not good for the reputation of the sector.”

He said the money Australia had collected through rejected Nepalese student visa applications was a “magnitude higher” than the A$8 million it had donated to Nepalese flood relief.

Under the proposal, the money would be used to fund credits that students could use to offset tuition fees, if they chose to pursue TNE options. “It would still connect…the student to an Australian higher education experience, and still get them on the way to achieving their dream to graduate with an Australian degree.”

The concept is being touted as one of the practical steps Canberra could take to help build Australian TNE – something governments repeatedly press universities to do. A report commissioned by Universities Australia (UA) and the International Education Association of Australia is due to be handed to the government in early November.

Studymove managing director Keri Ramirez, who conducted the research, said only about 20 per cent of Australia’s international students were studying offshore – in stark contrast to the UK, whose transnational students now outnumber foreigners studying in Britain. Ramirez said Australian TNE was concentrated in a handful of specialist institutions, with 76 per cent of the country’s offshore students enrolled at just six universities.  

Education minister Jason Clare again urged universities to embrace TNE in a televised address to the Australian International Education Conference in Sydney. “Not everyone can come here to study,” Clare said. “Not everyone can afford it. But we can come to them. What we do here has a reputation that rings around the world.”

UA chief executive Luke Sheehy said universities were “putting a lot of our capital” into emerging TNE markets, as evidenced by the number of recently established Australian branch campuses in India. But the considerable “impediments” to offshore ventures included sudden rule changes imposed by Canberra.

“Government…suddenly changes its mind,” Sheehy told the conference, citing moves to regulate offshore education and establish TNE task forces in various agencies. “We have to be careful what we wish for sometimes with government.”

Waring said the availability of local TNE options, along with doubts about students’ financial resources, was among the reasons students were “deemed to be non-genuine”. By using the students’ money to help facilitate their study locally, the government would be giving them the opportunity to demonstrate their genuine intent, he said.

Immigration authorities may have said…“you don’t have the finances to come to Australia”, Waring said. “But they may well have the finances to complete the identical degree in-country.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com