Riya Kattady has been preparing her own coffee at home all this week. Because of the upcoming limitation on the number of hours that overseas students are permitted to work, she will no longer be able to afford to get takeout.
She says, “I really need to give some serious consideration to how I spend my money now.” “I can’t just put in more hours at work… It’s important that I budget and organize everything.
Kattady, who is currently pursuing a master’s degree in engineering at Western Sydney university, is one of the almost 600,000 overseas students who are currently enrolled in Australia and who will be affected by a cap on working hours that will be implemented beginning on Saturday.
International students were allowed to work without limits under the temporary restrictions that were implemented during the epidemic; however, those changes have been reversed, and they are now only allowed to work a maximum of 24 hours per week. That does not necessarily strike Kattady as a negative aspect of the situation.
She argues that as a result, pupils will have to make their academic work a higher priority. They frequently let themselves get carried away by how much they could work and earn, and I believe that this cap reinforces how crucial it is to have a balance between the two.
Whenever somebody asked me to do extra work when I could be studying, I would generally say yes, but right now I simply can’t.
Kattady is a part of the student assistance program known as Western Success, where she works as an advisor. She believes that a great number of people will profit from the cap.
“A majority of students will come to us during exam time saying that they are struggling because they were picking up work hours,” she says. “We will try to accommodate them as best we can.” “While unrestricted hours enabled them to achieve financial freedom, it has also resulted in a great deal of stress for them.”
The news made in September that the cap would be reimposed was met with widespread approval from the industry. This came after the sector voiced concerns regarding a lack of transparency when the previous federal administration announced that it would be withdrawn.
Beginning in January of 2021, work authorization requirements for students on tourist and hospitality visas were eased, and beginning in January of the following year, they were temporarily eliminated entirely.
Phil Honeywood, chief executive of the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA), stated that there was “no consultation whatsoever with the international education sector” over the decision made by the Coalition in 2021 to address manpower shortages.
Prior to the implementation of the Covid border limitations, overseas students were permitted to work a total of 20 hours per week while pursuing their academic goals.
“I phoned [the former education minister] Alex Hawke the day it was announced, and I said, ‘what’s the story, why didn’t you talk to us?'” Honeywood says.
“He stated that it originated from another location. Because there were no more people in Australia on working vacation visas, the corporate sector desperately required unskilled labor. Full-time students were the simplest and most efficient method for funding the labor force.
The office of Hawke did not provide a response when a request for comment was made.
Honeywood claims that it is “absolutely necessary” that the modifications have been rolled back in order to put an end to endemic malpractice in the overseas education industry, and that this needed Labor to “resist pressure from the big end of town.”
Even with the new restrictions, students are allowed to work for three full days, which is one more day than students in countries like Canada and the UK.
Because there is a dearth of workers in the elderly care industry, students will be exempt from the cap and allowed to work an unlimited number of hours to make up for the gap.
Honeywood claims that when the limits were lifted, agents advised students to apply for courses with quality public providers that they knew would obtain them a visa, and then to transfer to cheaper private universities when they arrived in order to maximize their earnings.
“Public universities and quality private colleges are being used as a Trojan horse to obtain a visa and make haste on uncapped work hours,” said one researcher. “[T]hese individuals are also taking advantage of uncapped work hours.”
Julian Hill, a Labor Party member of Parliament, called for “nuclear” measures to be implemented in order to clean up poor-quality vocational educators last week. He claimed that these educators were using the system as a “low-rent work visa.”
He suggested stopping the admission of international students into low-quality courses and abolishing internal evaluations in order to buck the trend of people entering the country on student visas with the aim of working rather than attending school.
According to the Council of International Students Australia (Cisa), its students who come to Australia for valid study reasons have been put under tremendous mental health pressure to capitalize on Australia’s unlimited working hours. These members travel to Australia for legitimate study reasons.
Yeganeh Soltanpour, the national public relations officer for Cisa, stated that there has been a “50/50 divide” as to the benefits of the adjustments, but that she was “horrified” by the examples of exploitation that were promoted by unrestricted working hours.
Over the course of the previous five years, the Fair Work Ombudsman has initiated 126 legal proceedings concerning visa holders, leading to the imposition of penalties totaling more than $13.4 million.
“We saw a lot of students put themselves in a bad position by overextending themselves in terms of the number of hours they worked… “we’d see workplaces roster students on five days a week when they were supposed to be part-time, give them bad shifts, and they don’t know where to seek help,” she says. “we’d see workplaces roster students on five days a week when they were supposed to be part-time.”
“Students were not completing their courses, and because their families were aware that they were capable of physically working, they were encouraging their students to send a portion of the money they earned back home.”
On the other hand, according to Soltanpour, with the rising cost of living, it is “almost impossible” for students to maintain themselves on school loans from their home governments. These loans incur interest if they are not paid off quickly, therefore it is “almost impossible” for students to do so.
She states that “we are here to study, and internships are unpaid, but you feel that you have to forfeit real life experience in order to find paid work.” “I’ve worked with students who feel as though the world is collapsing around them.”
Honeywood claims that industry groups in the cleaning, hotel, and retail sectors, which have campaigned against the reinstitution of a cap, have ignored the primary reason why international students come to Australia: to pursue full-time education.
“The ability to work 20 hours was more about providing students with career options relevant to their courses in order to strengthen their resumes… “I want this group not to be perceived as simply a source of labor,” he says.
According to Catriona Jackson, the chief executive of Universities Australia, the decision to remove the limit on the number of hours that international students are permitted to work was “always intended” to be a temporary solution.
“Australia welcomes hundreds of thousands of international students to our world-class universities each year on the basis that, first and foremost, they come to study,” she says. “Australia is home to some of the best educational institutions in the world.”
“The slightly increased working hours allowance, adding four hours a week from July [to the pre-pandemic rate], is a balanced change that will ensure that international students can continue to support themselves while managing their studies and contributing to Australia’s workforce needs,” according to the Australian government.
