Education agents are the flywheel to Australia’s international education industry and the broader immigration system.
Indeed, Catriona Jackson, chief executive of Universities Australia, this month argued education agents are essential in easing the flow of international students from more than 144 countries to Australia.
The majority of international students apply to Australian universities and private colleges through education agencies, who are generally unregulated by the government.
Universities and training organisations then pay education agents commissions of thousands of dollars for each student enrolment they arrange.
Education agent Ravi Singh recently warned that many of Australia’s training colleges have turned into “visa factories” that are more concerned with providing immigration channels than educational opportunities.
Bijay Sapkota, a former president of the Council of International Students Australia, likewise warned that institutions no longer “care about the quality of education any more, they are just trying to get as many students as possible”.
Sapkota said it was common for education agents to direct students to colleges that delivered the highest commission rather than the best outcome for students or the economy.
With this background in mind, The Guardian on Sunday published an article explaining how international students are being directed into substandard and unsuitable courses by unregulated education agents, which has left many struggling financially and living on periphery in immigration limbo.
The article features Muhammad Ihsan, a Pakistani national who arrived in Australia in 2013 on a student visa to complete a masters in biotech and bioinformatics at a university in Melbourne.
When Ihsan arrived in Australia, he discovered that of about 90 students in his course, only two were Australian. The overwhelming majority were Indian students.
Ihsan was then advised by an agent to enrol in what he described an independent “scam college” in Tasmania where there was “no education [standards] whatsoever”. Ihsan paid $20,000 in upfront fees to study there.
Ihsan then took another course at an independent institute in Melbourne at the cost of $56,000 for two semesters.
“You can’t even label it as a course, it had no use”, he says. “Teachers were teaching masters level courses and you can’t comprehend a single thing they’re saying”.
Ihsan claims more than 100 people arrived for the first session at that course, but many stopped coming to class. Yet they still passed with degrees.
“I was sitting there in an empty room”, Ihsan says. “It’s all fake”.
Ihsan has ended up spending tens of thousands of dollars on various dud courses, and now finds himself driving Ubers in Tasmania and filling short-term jobs, still hoping to secure permanent residency.
“I’ve lost every shot I can have at a career, and more will be exploited in the same way”, Ihsan says.
“Hundreds of thousands of people like me are at the verge of a breaking point”, he says. “I’m a broken man”.
This is what Australia’s lauded international education system has become: a people smuggling scheme run by crooked institutions and dodgy agents.
Quality of education has been trashed in favour of delivering maximum numbers of bodies to meet the federal government’s mad Big Australia immigration program.
We need a royal commission into the whole stinking edifice and the immigration system more broadly.
