Australia revives international enrolment caps via new ministerial directive

It was clear by the end of November that Australia's controversial ESOS amendment bill – complete with its widely criticised methodology for establishing national and institutional caps on international enrolment – would not pass into law. The bill was effectively withdrawn at that point, and the international education sector has since been waiting to see how the government would respond.

The answer arrived today in the form of a 19 December 2024 announcement from the Department of Home Affairs. That statement revokes Ministerial Direction 107 (MD107), and replaces it with a new directive: Ministerial Direction 111 (MD111).

Ministerial directions do not require parliamentary approval, and therefore both of these important changes are now in immediate effect.

In a move that will be widely celebrated by the international education sector in Australia, this marks the end of Ministerial Direction 107. First introduced in December 2023, MD107 was an immigration framework that classified Australian institutions into different risk levels and offered preferential treatment to “low-risk” institutions. The directive triggered a significant spike in visa rejection rates for students from some countries, and especially so for providers that were assessed to be higher risk.

MD107 was broadly seen by Australian educators as a fatally flawed mechanism that created a great deal of uncertainty in the marketplace, while driving up rejection rates and dampening student demand.

A cap by any other name?

The 19 December Home Affairs statement sets out the new model that will take the place of MD107, explaining that:

"Under MD111, priority processing (Priority 1 – High) will apply to offshore Student visa applications associated with a provider in the higher education and vocational education and training sectors who have not yet reached their prioritisation threshold as indicated by PRISMS, the Department of Education’s system that manages enrolment information. Once the prioritisation threshold has been reached for a provider, visa processing will continue at Priority 2 - Standard priority."

What this appears to mean in practice is that visa applications will be processed for a given institution up to 80% of the indicative caps previously established under the ESOS amendment bill (where the cap was formally referred to as the National Planning Level [NPL]). Those indicative caps will now live on, and be largely administered via, the national information system PRISMS (Provider Registration and International Student Management System).

Beyond that 80% threshold, that same institution will fall to the end of the processing queue, with greater priority given to universities or colleges that have not reached the 80% benchmark.

What is not entirely clear from today's statement is the extent to which those indicative caps will be treated by immigration officials as hard caps on enrolment at a given institution.

The actual text of MD111 sets out that, "The existence of prioritisation of the offshore visa caseload in line with the 2025 indicative allocations of new overseas student commencements is not to be taken as a limit or cap upon the total number of visas that may be granted to any provider. It is a number used solely for the purposes of determining the number of visa applications that are to be processed with Priority 1 - High processing, before standard processing procedures in accordance with Priority 2 - Standard becomes applicable."

What that seems to indicate is that the overall cap established under the NPL (that new visa issuances will be limited to 270,000 nationally in 2025), along with the indicative caps assigned to each Australian institution under the NPL, have now become benchmarks for how the Australian government will "dispose" of visa applications.

There is considerable room for interpretation in the text of MD111, but the broad intent appears to be that visas will be processed up to the indicative cap limits (which in turn roll up to the national limit of the NPL) and then will "slow walk" processing beyond that point. How that will translate into actual processing times or rejection rates for applications, especially those handled under a "Priority 2 - Standard" approach may be the key aspect of the new ministerial direction, and it will now become one of the most important questions for the sector going forward into 2025.

For additional background, please see:

• "Report: Australian government preparing to replace controversial 'de facto cap' on foreign student numbers"
• "Australia’s enrolment cap legislation is stalled. What happens next?"
• "Why private VET providers are hardest hit by student caps in Australia"
• "Australia announces cap on student commencements for 2025"