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Major reform set for education agents
Major reform set for education agents
“Course-hopping” by students, a practice apparently encouraged by education agents has been cited as a reason the Australian government is investigating education agent practices with a view to introduce major reforms including the development of an accreditation framework.
One of the unfortunate effects of the streamlined visa processing (SVP) program which offers relatively quick and easy processing of student visas for mainly university students has been the practice of switching to lower cost education providers after they have started their courses. It’s a fraudulent scheme apparently promoted by some education agents.
The government has now ordered ‘a major research and scoping project into a quality framework for education agencies, marking a substantive push forward towards a possible national accreditation or ratings system’ according a report on the website www.pienews.com. The project is expected to deliver its report by the end of June 2015.
Heading the project is Phil Honeywood, executive director of The International Education Association of Australia (IEAA) – the peak body of education agents in Australia. Mr Honeywood is expected to travel to particularly India and China to meet education agents and encourage participation in a stakeholder survey. The survey is seeking feedback to help inform the potential development of a quality framework for Australia’s education agents. In particular, it seeks input regarding “the objectives and functions of a quality framework; agent accreditation systems, training and development; and best practice examples from other countries.”
Honeywood admits there are ‘ethical concerns’ with education agent behaviour right now and notes that the trigger for the project is the ‘course-hopping’ issue: “There has been some bad behaviour in recent times with students being persuaded to course hop from public unis into private colleges.”
According to the report, 60% of international higher education commencements have been supported by education agents over the past five years. However, regulating education brokers has been an issue the government has been grappling with for a while. Currently there is an ad hoc system whereby brokers have the option of undergoing voluntary training which some education institutions have put down as a requirement for brokers wanting to represent them. The overriding legislation governing broker conduct however is the very general Australian Consumer Law.
A spokeswoman for Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane told The Australian earlier this year that proposed commonwealth standards, announced last year, would make colleges responsible for the behaviour of their agents as “the government is determined to stamp out misleading behaviour by brokers.”
Christopher Levingston wrote an open letter on this forum to Mr Macfarlane earlier this year stating, “The solution to this problem is clear. Stop the DIBP from ‘registering” education Agents. Require all persons giving Immigration assistance to be Registered Migration Agents.”
The stakeholder survey is open until Friday 10 April 2015.
Immigration blog
The whole Education Industry is a big mess, much like a hornets nest that nobody dares to poke too much. The last few years we have seen one blanket rule by the other being introduced as a response to an "inappropriate behavior" of a discrete market segment, and the already compliant majority just being collateral damage in the carnage. Like this SVP-GTE parity, the most ill-conceived, irrelevant, not working, and down right harmful system they could have cooked up. Whenever I read about SVP it is mentioned as a holy grail of ensuring only "genuine" students can have the privilege to pay ridiculous amounts of money to study in Australia. Everyone seems to forget that SVP was originally the result of another union lobby to "save Australian jobs for Australians" and letting in as few students as possible who take on low skilled jobs, but at the same time feeding the public universities with international student money so the government does not have to pay for their operation. Of course these SVP courses as much more overpriced than the very same courses at a private college that does not have the SVP enrolment concession, and of course students do not want to be ripped off if they can have the same education for half the price. Branding it bad behavior to try and counteract a government policy that exists solely to milk extra money out of those who want to come to Australia for an education, is simply false and misleading hypocrisy.
I do agree that there are lots of nasty crooks out there calling themselves education agents and make a bad name for the whole industry, but then regulate properly and do not punish all with another badly designed blanket rule, as there are also a well few who run an honest business and decent practice as an education consultancy. Requiring them all to register as RMA-s is not only excessive but also practically impossible, since many big international agencies do not have a member who is an Australian citizen or Permanent Resident so they cannot legally register as RMA-s, yet they are hardly unscrupulous in any way. I do agree though that some kind of registration and control should be imposed as it is not an acceptable status quo that every self professed course broker out there present themselves as immigration experts and do advise clients as such, even lodge visas on their behalf mostly without having any idea what they are doing, and the consequences of their actions on the client can be detrimental if they mess it up.
For the record, I am an education agent and an RMA, and I have never enrolled a student under SVP as it is not my market.