Student visa face-lift – Good news for Australian Universities and international students

Tough student visa requirements for overseas higher education students will be lifted and 2 to 4 years post-study work visa will be introduced for international students university graduates.
The recommendations were made by Michael Knight, former Sydney 2000 Olympics minister who was commissioned in January 2011 by Chris Bowen the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship and Chris Evans the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Jobs and Workplace Relations, to work on a Strategic Review of the Student Visa Program.

Universities will have to be patient and wait for about a year for the changes, which are scheduled to apply from the second semester 2012. But by mid-next year, foreign students keen on an Australian university degree will have access to a new, fast-track visa system. Vocational colleges will also have to wait on a second review, also scheduled next year, before they see major changes to visa processing arrangements for their own international students.

Under the new rules for universities, all students will be treated as “low-risk”.

This will make visa processing faster and easier by reducing the amount of money they need in order to demonstrate that they have the financial capacity to live and work in Australia, and eliminating the need for them to sit language tests for viza purposes. Vocational and English language colleges will see some benefit from other changes scheduled next year, including reduced financial capacity requirements for their students. This would see a reduction of up to $36 000 in the amount of money students from”high risk” countries, such as India and China, are required to deposit in bank accounts before they apply for their student visas.

Students from supposedly high-risk countries, will no longer have to show $75 000 – plus in a bank account to prove they can cover fees and living costs. Instead, as with students from developed countries such as the US, they will be able to simply declare they can support themselves. The changes will also eliminate rules which forced students to meet minimum English language requirements before they could come to Australia to study English.