Organised crime targets universities

THE infiltration of Australia's $16 billion foreign education sector by organised crime has been exposed in a confidential report to the Immigration Department showing nearly 40 per cent of detected fraud involving student visas last year was aimed at universities.

Previously, the problem was thought to be confined mainly to the private vocational educational sector, with private colleges and language schools being the preferred target of people-smuggling operations.

But the report to Immigration by consultants Ernst & Young, obtained under Freedom of Information laws by The Australian, shows universities and vocational colleges are increasingly being exploited to place bogus students.

The Ernst & Young report showed that in the 10 months to April last year, higher education accounted for 39 per cent of student visas refused where fraud was involved. But it was higher in the 12 months to June 2008, where higher education accounted for more than half - 53 per cent - of such cases.

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"The majority of fraud risks stem from higher education and vocational education and training," the report found.

It said Australian immigration and education officers in diplomatic posts were having to work with foreign governments' law enforcement agencies regarding "increased levels of organised fraud".

This amounts to an admission that organised crime is targeting the student visa to shoehorn illegal migrants into the country as fee-paying students.

The revelations will concern university leaders, who have blamed most student migration fraud on less rigorously regulated private colleges and institutes.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship declined to say whether it knew organised crime was using education and migration agents for migration fraud.

"The department is concerned with any type of visa fraud, whether it involves overseas organised crime elements or not," a DIAC spokesman said.

The Ernst & Young report identified 15 types of fraud used to circumvent DIAC document checks aimed at establishing prospective students' bona fides, especially compulsory character, financial, English, health, education and college attendance requirements.

It points to visa refusals of all types in vocational education being more than three times that of higher education from July to October of the current financial year.

However, "enhanced integrity measures" were being applied to applicants from India, Mauritius, Nepal, Brazil, Zimbabwe and Pakistan, DIAC said.

Universities Australia chief Glenn Withers yesterday dismissed the Ernst & Young report as dated. "UA has been pleased to work closely with DIAC to ensure the bona fides of students coming to Australia to study," he said.

There had been a 14 per cent growth in student visas last year on top of already record application levels, but DIAC was managing fraud at "acceptable" levels, the report found.