Universities lose money as students must wait months at a time.

Weeks before the start of the new semester, Australian colleges are having a terrible time arranging their curricula and budgets due to visa delays and denials.

The Department of Home Affairs (DHA) reports that in recent months, the median time it takes for students pursuing higher education to obtain a visa has more than tripled. Ten percent of students have delays of at least four months, and fifty percent of applicants are kept waiting at least 47 days—an increase from 14 days in February—for the processing of their papers.

In the meantime, applicants for offshore visas are being denied at a rate that is over three times higher than the pre-Covid average. Roughly one in three applications from India, one in two from Nepal, and three out of five from Pakistan are denied overall.

South Asian students used to have a month or so before the start of the semester to accept enrollment offers, according to the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Deputy Vice-Chancellor Iain Watt stated that the university was compelled to extend the buffer period due to delays in visa processing.

“We won’t confirm their enrolments because we know they won’t get a visa in time if they haven’t accepted their offers by about two months before the start of term,” Mr. Watt stated.

He calculated that if not for the adjustments and delays in visa processing during the previous six months, UTS would have lost more than A$100 million (£52 million) in tuition fees from students who would have been allowed to enroll this year.

Despite a general rise in visa rejections, UTS is one of 16 universities that has been able to hold onto their level 1 immigration risk ratings. “Imagine what it’s like for institutions that have been pushed to the back of the visa processing line and are now rated at level 2 or 3,” Mr. Watt stated.

Data from DHA indicates that there is still a high demand for Australian education. During the 11 months leading up to May, about 185,000 prospective international students filed for higher education visas; this is somewhat more than during the same period the previous year and more than 50% more than in the days before COVID-19. However, so far this year, there have been 26% fewer visas issued than during the same period last year.

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With the start of the new term in a few weeks, Charles Sturt University (CSU) reported that over 40% of its prospective international students still lacked a valid visa. According to pro vice-chancellor Mike Ferguson, feedback from agents and students indicated that the majority of visas were taking two to three months to process.

“Semester one was quite harsh for us and other universities. It appears that the second semester will be rather similar. Simply put, it makes planning incredibly challenging, especially with caps hanging over us.”

CSU believes that it has already spent over A$40 million as a result of the changes to visa processes. According to Mr. Ferguson, a former DHA director of foreign education strategy, the denial of visas to “genuine” students is “a mechanism to reduce net overseas migration” by the authorities.

Proposed international enrollment caps, according to him, might act as a circuit breaker. “We anticipate and hope to return to a more consistent processing scenario once the caps are in place.”

All but five Australian universities, according to Mr. Watt, were losing students to non-English speaking nations like Germany and Malaysia as well as the US, “because we’re perceived as not as welcoming as we used to be.” He stated that he did not think the procedure of obtaining visas would become better before the next federal election. “Political parties are using this as an opportunity to demonstrate their control over immigration figures.”