Daily transcripts of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption’s inquiry into Uni Wollongong reveal what was on the minds of some senior staff as the university community endured the impact of a job-cutting restructure. Counsel Assisting Emma Bathurst’s Opening Statement, on June 22 sets the scene.
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The Government has jacked up student visa fees, again. The standard one cost $1,600 on June 30 ’25, $2,000 on Tuesday and now $2,500. The Temporary Graduate visa application fee increased from $2,300 until 1 March this year and now has been hiked to $5,750. Universities Australia summed up the sector’s response. “Today’s fee hike doesn’t stand alone. It comes on top of higher visa refusal rates, policy uncertainty and a series of decisions that have made Australia a less attractive destination.” Which might be what the Feds want to demonstrate to One Nation inclined electors. Still, it could be worse for ELICOS, the price of its visa only increased $50. The problem is, way fewer people are interested – as of April, visa applications were down 27% year on year to just 5,600.
Even before the new fees kicked in, it looked like public universities will struggle to enrol all the new internationals allowed for the year. As of last week, 100,300 students had started or had a vias for a promised place at a public university. The Feds’ total indicative allocation for 2026 New Overseas Student Commencements is 161,000. Only Monash U and the Unis of Melbourne and Sydney have reached 80% of their 10,000 plus 2026 quotas.
The International Students Representative Council of Australia (ISRC) expressed strong opposition. “The problem is not only the amount of the fee. The deeper issue is the way these decisions are being made. Over the past three years, major changes to international student visa settings, graduate work rights, eligibility rules, visa costs and migration pathways have repeatedly been introduced with little or no notice, limited transition arrangements, and without any meaningful, ongoing channel of consultation with elected international student representatives.” The ISRC has issued a warning to prospective international students and their families, to “carefully assess the increasing policy uncertainty surrounding Australia’s international education system before choosing Australia as your study destination.”
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TEQSA explains why it decided its annual conference will be all online. “We were not confident, at the time that we would need to have secured an 800+ seat venue, on where the national fuel security levels might take our nation later in the year.” The agency underestimates itself – once Iran’s Revolutionary Guard heard how TEQSA sorted out ANU it would have feared a similar fate and opened the strait to tankers with oil for Aus.
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Industry Minister Tim Ayres is implementing the Strategic Examination of Research and Development, he told a Sydney meeting last week. Although you might miss it, what with the Report having a new name. SERD, the Comrade Minister said, “is “one of the least attractive kind of names for (a) reporting system that I have ever heard.”
It’s now Ambitious Australia, which is “a smart framework of bringing together bright minds through to industrial strength.”
My Ayres went his familiar full Chifley in explaining the need for a publicly-supported national industry program, including a core SERD, sorry Ambitious Aus recommendation, for a National Science and Technology Council. It was announced in the Budget as the National Science and Resilience Council to “better coordinate and align public innovation investments with Australia’s economic objectives.”
But alas, he did not mention another SERD, as was, suggestion, to transfer funding from half a dozen present programs, including CRCs, to the new central agency.
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FC admires the work of ex-RAN sailor, now defence analyst Jennifer Parker – but perhaps she missed the bit from Julian Corbett on the value of surprise. She was on LinkedIn the other day announcing her appearance in a forthcoming Uni of New England recruitment campaign. She studied law while “serving at sea … thanks to UNE’s flexibility.” We will learn more when the campaign runs later this year.
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The TAFE establishment gets the opportunity that “tertiary harmonisation” offers its members to eat higher education’s status lunch. The TAFE National Network has research projects on recognising prior experience (note, not learning). There is also one on learning and teaching resources across priority skills areas, as well as curriculum and delivery for ICT learn-earn. Not to mention tech to validate prior leaning. And “a sustainable model for creating learning product for national priority industry areas.” In case governments are serious about a post-school skills system, public tech-ed wants to set the policy agenda .
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There is $50m for AI Accelerator(s) in next year’s Cooperative Research Centre Round 28. The brief includes the standard CRC objective, “solve real-world challenges faced by industry and the community in sectors.” But there is also “building broad AI capability in Australia to develop core AI technologies that are application agnostic and can apply across multiple sectors.” Gosh, a new cooperative research centre category – after CRCs and CRC-Projects, there is going to be CRC-Mission Creep.
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ATEC summarises what it is up to in a new edition of “Insights.” They may want a new name because insightful it isn’t – at least not on its “pilot costing and pricing exercise with a small group of universities.” Apparently “this work is iterative and is intended to improve ATEC’s understanding before any broader approach is considered.” By which time, Commissioners’ minds may be made up. Maybe they should have a word with Gwilym Croucher and Mark Rahimi (both from Uni Melbourne’s Centre for the Study of Higher Education) who have a new paper on the structural drivers of teaching costs (HERE). Unless they are already talking but ATEC is not telling.
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A House of Reps committee inquiry confirms Asian language learning is in mortal strife, with “a self-reinforcing cycle of decline: low enrolments make programs unviable and lead to their closure, closures reduce the options available to students, fewer options further depress enrolments.”
And (what a surprise!) Job Ready Graduates is reported to be partly to blame – despite the policy cutting the course cost of languages to the lowest band, $4,700 a year. The committee heard the problem is that language students don’t take related subjects about Asian cultures because they attract top HASS whack. And universities don’t like languages because teaching them is heavily subsidised by the Feds – this burns through their total public funding faster than courses that attract smaller payments.
How do you say “no good deed goes unpunished” in Bahasa Indonesia?