After threatening overseas students with a potential visa cancellation for switching courses DIBP has gone into damage control and is now reassuring students that this will not happen.

The Australian reports that DIBP has backed down, following protests from students and non-SVP providers, that DIBP’s crackdown was unexpected, unfair and causing much anxiety.

“In an email to the Education Visa Consultative Committee, the department says it “will not take any further action against students” who transferred from an SVP degree course to a non-SVP degree course before the January 14 “education campaign” and who meet all other visa conditions,” says the report.

Teaching foreign students is Australia’s fourth-biggest export earner, generating $15 billion a year in income and employing about 100,000 Australians. It is serious business. Poor media coverage and concerns over uncertainties with student visas had a devastating effect on the industry in recent years which is only just now starting to recover.

DIBP's recent campaign which saw over 1400 students receiving emails warning them they were in breach of the visa conditions caused anguish to both students and non-SVP providers. Its forced DIBP to rethink its strategy on the matter.

“We consider that it would not be reasonable to penalise students who may have unintentionally breached the conditions of their visa prior to the launch of the campaign” DIBP told The Australian but still points out that students will as a general rule require a new visa to switch from an SVP course to a non-SVP course.

The Australian reports that Phil Honeywood, of the International Education Association of Australia, said: “Technically the department had every right to remind students of their obligations under SVP visas. However, they could have consulted much better on the wording of these (January 14) letters.

“Many students have been traumatised by being told they have to go home.

“The sooner we return to a minimum one year study requirement with the principal education provider (rather than the current setting of six months) the better for all stakeholders in international education.”