CRICOS Exempt Courses Boost Access for International Students

In Australia, international students are persons who hold a student visa. Until recently, international students were only allowed to study courses listed on the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students (CRICOS). This requirement existed to uphold the integrity of the student visa system and quality-assure Australia’s international education sector.

Most courses on CRICOS are full qualifications, and many VET providers are not CRICOS-registered. This is particularly true for providers that specialise in delivering skillsets, short courses, and/or ‘ticketed’ training with a licensed outcome. Providers of short courses rarely register them on CRICOS because the extra financial and administrative costs of maintaining CRICOS registration generally exceeded the returns.

Image by Alessia Margarita

This restriction meant that international students faced barriers and had less choice of provider if they wanted to (lawfully) study popular short courses that could boost their employability in Australia, such as:

• Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) training

• Barista training

• Construction induction or ‘white card’ training

• First aid or CPR training

• Food safety training

• Infection control training

Historically, international students that enrolled in a short course with a non-CRICOS provider were breaching their visa conditions and risked having their student visa cancelled. But a new legislative instrument has recently been introduced by the Australian Government that exempts 21 units of competency from the requirement to be reqistered on CRICOS. This means that the exempt courses can be offered to international students by non-CRICOS providers that have the exempt courses on their scope of registration. International students can now complete these supplementary courses concurrently with their CRICOS-registered courses.

Allowing international students to study these 21 short courses at any provider that offers them is great for students and providers alike - international students gain access to employability-boosting training, and VET providers have access to a new market.

More information about this new instrument is available on DESE’s website.