Student visa refusals hit 10-year high, crushing dreams

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Angelica Felincia has dreamed of studying in Australia since her first year of high school.

“I wanted to experience life outside of Indonesia and see different cultures,” she said.

“Australia has many beautiful places and I feel like I am connecting with the local culture.”

Ms Felincia, who said she enjoys being around children, found early childhood education to be a “well-respected and popular field in Australia”.

She said her desire to study in Australia made her turn down a place at an Indonesian university.

However, her visa application, which included a 27-page statement on why she wanted to study in Australia, was rejected within a day.

The employee asked why she could not continue her studies in her home country.

“The letter stated that my claim to be a genuine student did not provide a strong enough basis to study in Australia.”

Data from the Department of Home Affairs (DOHA) shows that student visa denials have reached a ten-year high, with the rate rising from 7.9 percent in June 2016 to 24.2 percent in June this year.

In 2025-26, more than 51 percent of all student visa applications from Nepal were rejected, compared to more than 40 percent in India.

China recorded a failure rate of 5.8 percent over the same period.

Nepali applicant Asif Rahim applied for a master’s degree in accounting in Melbourne in March but was rejected in April.

He said he witnessed “massive rejection” among his Nepalese friends who also applied at the same time.

Mr Rahim said the department was not satisfied with his research proposal.

“I’m very disappointed with the rejection because I spent 15-16 months preparing everything,” he said.

Copy-paste refusals

The refusals come as international students become the focus of debate over the decline in migration in Australia.

Last week the government closed the vocational education and training course over concerns that students were using it to maintain their visas rather than actually study.

The DOHA website states that in order to obtain a student visa, applicants must provide a “Genuine Student (GS) Requirement”, which details the student’s “intent to actually study in Australia”.

However, some migration agents have raised questions about how case managers evaluate applications against GS criteria.

Umar Ashraf, a migration agent at Magpie Consultants, said he understood the government would refuse a visa if there was a gap in time from studying, a career path divergence or an intention to stay in Australia longer than necessary on a student visa.

But he was confused by the many rejected offshore applications he saw.

“I believe that 60 to 70 percent of these denials are just thrown back by the department,” he said.

Fu Wu Minh, a migration agent at VisaEnvoy, said the department gave “unreasonable” reasons in its refusal letters, which she said were often “vague.”

“It’s like copying one thing into another,” she said.

“This does not … indicate that the investigator carefully assessed all of the evidence presented with the statement.”

ABC reviewed several rejection letters from the department and found nearly identical paragraphs, minor changes in wording and paraphrased sentences that explained why the assessment scores in the applicant’s documents were not accepted.

Ms Minh said that although applicants had submitted up to 15 pages to address the necessary issues, the GS assessment was “highly subjective to the curator”.

“You can get approval from one curator, but for the same case [or application] another curator may refuse you,” she said.

Chris Johnston of Work Visa Lawyers said he had seen a five-fold increase in the number of appeals filed by applicants across the country against refusals in recent months.

He said the “very common patterns” in refusal letters for offshore applicants who were unable to appeal were “worrying”.

“When someone pays the money and it’s done … the evidence should be considered on its merits,” he said, adding that applicants must pay up to $2,500 to apply.

“It’s unfair if they [the government] They’re just refusing because they don’t want people to come to Australia.”

DOHA said it had taken a number of measures to “strengthen the integrity and quality of the international education sector and student visa program.”

A spokesman said the measure resulted in “more scrutiny of applications and an increase in the number of refusals of applications that do not meet visa requirements.”

“Student visa applications are assessed based on their individual circumstances and compliance with Australian immigration law requirements,” the spokesperson said.

“Easy Target”

Lee Tran, professor of education at Deakin University, said there was a “legitimate need to address poor quality providers, course change and abuse of student visas in Australia”.

But she said she would be “cautious about taking a broad approach to ‘repression’.”

“There is also a risk that repeated restrictive measures will create the impression internationally that Australia is becoming much less welcoming to international students.”

She said international students were an “easy target” and their cohort was one of the largest components of temporary migration.

“My biggest concern is that international students are increasingly being treated as political objects rather than as students and members of our educational community,” she said.

Luke Sheehy, CEO of Universities Australia, said the current handling of student visas was having a “detrimental impact” on universities.

“[It’s] devastating, especially for our regional universities and some of our universities in the growth corridor areas of our country,” he said.

“It takes years… to interact with students, to go to their country, to talk to them… so that they can come to Australia and study at our world-class institutions.”