“We are growing to the point of being about 20% lower than we were 20 years back,” English Australia CEO Ian Aird stated of the country’s English language mentor sector (ELICOS) at The PIE Live Asia Pacific 2026.
“We have lost 20 years’ worth of financial investment in this sector, twenty years of effort to end up being a world-leading location for English language study,” he added.
The panellists laid bare the degree of the difficulties facing the Australian sector, with record-high visa rejections intensified by fresh boosts to Australia’s student visa application fees last month.
“We’re resting on our laurels and we really shouldn’t,” Aird told delegates: “The competition that Australia’s up once again is pretty fierce.”
While Department of Home Affairs assistant secretary Matthew Noble insisted Australia had a “globally competitive” research study visa grant rate of 78%, Aird said it was a “really various image” when you read into the variation in between sectors.
We’re saying no to veterinarian however we desperately require the abilities at the exact same time Phil Honeywood, International Education Association of Australia (IEAA)
For example, while the grant rate for Chinese students going into degree programs is 96%, it drops to 60% for those going into ELICOS or VET.
And in spite of the truth ELICOS and ASEAN trainees were spared the worst of the cost hike– with their application charge rising from $2,000 to $2,050– Aird argued tuition fees were still wildly disproportionate to English language program costs, with the typical 17-week course typically costing $5,000.
He mentioned that this makes visa fees for ELICOS students disproportionately high.
“The $2,000 application cost is 40% of that. That’s unreasonable,” he said. “The equivalent would be the bottom end of a degree student where they’re paying $50,000 for a degree. How most likely are they to pay a $20,000 visa application charge?”
What’s more, he argued the separate rates structure revealed 2 things: “Primary, the federal government can distinguish visa costs, and second, the English language sector need to have a lower cost.”
On top of Australia having the world’s most pricey visa system, speakers stated record-high visa refusal rankings were disproportionately impacting English language and vocational students, inadvertently harming the country’s skills requires.
“We’ve got this scenario where we’re saying no to VET however we frantically require the abilities at the very same time,” said Phil Honeywood, CEO of the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA).
He emphasised the irony of the truth that the federal government’s own 2025 Jobs and Abilities Australia report found a “raft of occupation diploma-level credentials that Australia requires as abilities moving forward”, while these students are having their visas declined at disproportionate rates.
For the federal government’s part, Noble repeated that there had not been a modification in visa policy which the department evaluates “each and every application”, sharing concerns about current application quality amongst trainees from South Asia which resulted in more rejections.
However Honeywood alerted that visa rejections in the VET space would result in Australia falling behind in the local abilities race, successfully allowing other nations to “backfill” Australia’s skills lacks.