Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size They stand largely empty, hiding in plain sight, their little-used classrooms scattered through office buildings all over Melbourne’s CBD. In the exploding foreign education industry, they call them ghost colleges. There are often several in lower-price office blocks. At 190 Queen Street, there are 20 different colleges where students can choose from 200 different courses. Stand out the front of that Queen Street office tower, though, and you won’t see many students coming and going. In the foyer of some buildings, handwritten signs point students to the “institute” or “academy” within, offering training. Yet months of visits to many of these colleges found a near total absence of students. At some, the lights weren’t even on. On paper, this burgeoning industry is providing tens of thousands of international students with an education – particularly students from India and Nepal. In reality, many of the colleges are near deserted. Some don’t expect students to turn up, noting that the law does not require them to enforce attendance and pointing to other similarly deserted colleges. After a law change in July, students are limited to online learning for a maximum of one-third of their classes – the rest must be done in person. So where are they?

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University of Sydney academic Salvatore Babones says they are likely at work — as these supposed students had always intended to be. “They are not genuinely studying. They are simply overpaying for a work visa,” he said. Loading Last year, Babones published a book on Australia’s incredible international student growth and argues that in some cases, the country’s student visa is really playing the part of a low-skill work visa and has become a money spinner for education providers. “If Australia wants to import low-skill labour from South Asia, it should do it in an honest way,” Babones said. “Charge a reasonable visa fee and admit them to work.” Experts such as Babones say the explosion in international student numbers has made a mockery of both our education and immigration systems. This year, Australia hit half-a-million international students arriving a year for the first time.

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A decade ago, Australia welcomed 32,000 international students and their families from India and Nepal. By June this year, that had risen to 143,000. China went from 54,000 a decade ago to 99,000 this year. The growth this year from India alone has been ferocious: applications for tertiary education jumped from 3000 a month in March to 8000 by June. Babones argues that while most students willingly enrol at training colleges that did not necessarily require attendance, they were still victims. “Their visas, which are in effect work visas, nonetheless require them to subsidise Australian universities and colleges under the pretence that they are actually here to study.” Salvatore Babones says while most students willingly enrol at training colleges that did not necessarily require attendance, they were still victims. Credit: Steven Siewert The unprecedented boom in students from India, Nepal and China has led to the proliferation of ghost colleges across Melbourne’s city centre where there are just under 300 private vocational colleges. On Queen Street alone, there are 70 private colleges registered with the federal government. There are now so many colleges that other education providers who do expect their students to attend are struggling to compete. “If you put pressure on students to attend, they switch to a college where there won’t be pressure and they can work,” said Rajeev Minhas, who runs a reputable college training students in automotive mechanics. Both cookery and auto mechanics are popular certificate courses right now because they offer a pathway to permanent residency.

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Minhas has been in the vocational education sector since 2007 when, he says, colleges were able to compel students to attend classes. Now, it was near impossible to compete against colleges that offered the same course but did not expect students to show up, he said. Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil is well aware of the issues surrounding international education, with a spokesman saying the federal government has “inherited a migration system shot-through with rorts and completely failing to deliver for our national interest, for local workers or for people coming to this country”. Minister for Home Affairs Clare O’Neil. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen A new migration strategy will be released later this year which will attempt to address issues in international education. These have been publicly highlighted both by a parliamentary inquiry that began this year and is due to report soon, and by former Victoria Police chief commissioner Christine Nixon’s review of the immigration system – prompted by reporting late last year by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald and 60 Minutes. “Weeding out the disreputable providers and [education] agents is going to take determination and tough decisions,” said federal Labor MP Julian Hill, who is on the inquiry and is the former head of international education for the Victorian government. Hill says many vocational colleges offer high-quality teaching to a diversity of students and make a critical contribution to skills shortages plaguing the overheating economy in the post-pandemic recovery. “But at the bottom end, the concerns raised by reputable providers are deeply worrying. There is unacceptable behaviour and manipulation of the migration system by some private vocational colleges and dodgy agents,” he said.

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According to a government source not authorised to speak publicly, it is likely the federal government will implement reforms later this year including cracking down on onshore education agents, potentially making it more difficult for students to transfer between universities and colleges, and giving more resources and power to the Australian Skills Quality Authority and the universities regulator. The authority regulates private colleges and has three inspectors in Victoria who can make unannounced visits to colleges. It says on-the-ground inspectors are not required to assess whether a college is complying with the rules. “We effectively target risks to quality [vocational colleges] and are not constrained by the site location of our staff,” a statement from the authority said. Education agents make their living arranging visas for students to come to Australia. Global Reach agent Ravi Lochan Singh has recruited students to Australia for 32 years and says many who enrol in universities and then move to colleges are in reality workers – not students. He says some private colleges target university students “to drop out of the degrees in favour of low-cost and highly flexible diplomas”. This means that often, universities recruit students from their home country, especially India, and then lose thousands of them to the vocational sector. International Education Association of Australia chief executive Phil Honeywood has been heavily involved in previous attempts to better regulate education agents.

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