Integrity or Overreach? Making Sense of the 2025 ESOS and TEQSA Reforms

December 14, 2025 Sukh Sandhu

Like everyone else, I’ve spent the past few days buried in documents. Drafts, suggestions, and finally, the Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025. There’s been plenty of commentary swirling around. These reforms are big. They could change a lot. I thought it was time to share my take on what they mean for the industry.

Reference:

Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025 https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r7384

New reforms to strengthen the international education sector https://www.education.gov.au/newsroom/articles/new-reforms-strengthen-international-education-sector

Source: https://www.education.gov.au/esos-framework/changes-legislative-framework-overseas-students

On the surface, the message from the government is clear: this package is about integrity, student protection, and cleaning up the small but damaging group of providers and agents who treat international education as a migration shortcut rather than an education system.

In practice, the story is more complicated.

Several of my colleagues have raised powerful questions about education agents and commissions, offshore regulation, the quality of consultation, and - perhaps most importantly - whose voices counted when this Bill was designed.

Some have welcomed the integrity measures as overdue.

Others see the risk of a heavy bureaucratic hand landing on a sector that is already struggling.

Is this essential oversight, or merely bureaucratic overreach disguised as integrity reform once again?

What is this Bill, why now, and what does it actually do?

The Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025 is the government’s latest attempt to reshape the rules for international education after a very turbulent few years.

An earlier ESOS Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill in 2024 tried to introduce hard legislative caps on international student numbers. That proposal collapsed in the Senate after heavy criticism from universities and independent providers, who argued that blunt caps would damage Australia’s largest services export while failing to target the small number of poor-quality operators.

The 2025 Bill keeps almost all of the integrity and quality measures from the 2024 Bill, but removes the hard caps. The government is now managing growth mainly through the planning and visa system rather than direct caps in the ESOS Act.

At its core, this new Bill amends four main Acts:

The Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 (ESOS Act) - New concepts and rules around education agents and education agent commissions, stronger fit‑and‑proper tests and ownership/agent link scrutiny. New powers on CRICOS applications, dormancy cancellation and “classes of courses” suspension/cancellation.
The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency Act 2011 (TEQSA Act) - New offshore authorisation regime for higher education providers delivering Australian awards overseas (authorisation, conditions, reporting, and cancellation powers).
The Higher Education Support Act 2003 - Removes the exception that kept medicine courses outside the demand‑driven CSP arrangements for First Nations students, so CSP places in medicine for eligible First Nations students become demand‑driven.
The A New Tax System (Family Assistance) (Administration) Act 1999 - Expands information‑gathering and handling powers (for example, to support the Early Education Service Delivery Prices Project) and aligns effective dates for some child care subsidy reconciliation decisions.

For the international education community, the most significant changes are to ESOS and TEQSA.

The Department of Education has been very explicit about the policy intent. The reforms are designed to:

strengthen integrity in international education
combat the exploitation of overseas students
address providers who use education as a vehicle to exploit the migration system, not to deliver genuine learning.

Most people in the sector agree that these goals are legitimate.

The debate is about the design of the tools, how they will be used in practice, and whether they strike the right balance between integrity, fairness and sustainable growth.

A continuation of a long integrity agenda

This Bill does not land in a vacuum.

It continues a decade-long pattern of tightening the ESOS framework.

Over recent years, we have already seen or heard:

The Education Legislation Amendment (Provider Integrity and Other Measures) Act 2017, which strengthened the government’s ability to monitor and prevent unscrupulous business practices from gaining ESOS registration. Expanding reporting of significant events and improving information‑sharing and enforcement powers against unscrupulous providers.
New ESOS Regulations in 2019, which expanded reporting on agents and other risk points for CRICOS providers.
The Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Refunds of Charges and Other Measures) Act 2021, which clarified the definition of “course”, allowed refunds of charges in special circumstances, and enabled the Minister to exempt certain low-risk “supplementary courses” (for example, short, low-cost industry prerequisites) from the definition of “course” for ESOS purposes.
The Education Services for Overseas Students (Exempt Courses) Instrument 2021, which now allows certain supplementary courses (often first aid, safety tickets and similar) to be delivered to overseas students without full CRICOS registration.
Revised CRICOS registration charges and deregulation measures from 2021 that simplified the charging regime and removed the requirement to report payment of tuition fees monthly through PRISMS.
Application of the Regulatory Powers Act provisions to ESOS, standardising monitoring, investigation and enforcement powers across Commonwealth regulators.
ESOS agencies must consider cross‑ownership and control links between providers and agents, and whether specified serious offences are under investigation, and providers must notify regulators of new or changed ownership/agent relationships.
Two‑year domestic‑delivery requirement for most new VET CRICOS applicants (excluding TAFEs).
Ministerial powers to pause or not process certain CRICOS applications during periods of systemic risk.
Automatic suspension/cancellation of CRICOS registrations or classes of courses in defined circumstances, including 12‑month inactivity.
In parallel with the Bill, the government has signalled a “managed system” for international education from 2026, using Ministerial Directions in the visa system and other levers to manage growth by provider and sector instead of hard ESOS caps.

Seen through this lens, the 2025 Integrity and Other Measures Bill is not the start of integrity reform. It is the next ratchet. The system has moved from:

clarifying definitions and streamlining some processes
to reshape markets through exempt courses and revised fees
to now directly targeting agents, ownership structures, course types, and provider entry and exit.

For compliant providers who already invest heavily in quality, this can feel like a constant tightening of obligations without a matching reduction in other burdens.

For students and the public, it may still feel like regulators are only now catching up with problems that should have been tackled years ago.

Why were integrity reforms needed at all?

Before critiquing the detail, it is important to acknowledge why there is a strong political and public appetite for integrity measures.

Real problems with agents and commissions

It is not controversial to say that the international education recruitment system has been driven, in part, by opaque commission structures and volume-based incentives.

Government analysis, media investigations and sector reviews have identified:

significant information asymmetries in the agent market
providers are often unable to see what commissions competitors are paying, while agents clearly see who pays what
commission rates sometimes reaching around 30 per cent of annual tuition fees in mainstream cases, and colleagues now openly talking about offers in the range of 45 to 50 per cent.

International student peak bodies and support organisations have, for years, documented cases where students are steered into courses that maximise the agent’s commission rather than the student’s interests. The consequences are familiar:

course-hopping
unsuitable enrolments
visa risk and non-compliance
students left with debt and qualifications that do not fit their goals.

In that context, colleagues like Jane, who are seeing commission rates approaching half of the tuition fee, are right to ask the hard question: if nearly half of a student’s fee is being siphoned off-campus in commissions, how much is left to invest in teaching quality, student support, research and campus infrastructure?

The International Students Representative Council of Australia (ISRC), the new independent national voice for international students, put this bluntly in its submission to the Senate inquiry: substantial commissions would be better used to improve teaching quality, student support and research capacity; percentage-based and per-head commissions create strong incentives for volume-driven recruitment and poor course fit. That submission was the only student organisation quoted in full in the Senate Committee’s report - a telling fact in itself.

The provider integrity problem

Alongside agent issues, the government has been trying to weed out providers that treat international education as a migration or cash-flow scheme rather than an educational endeavour.

The sector has seen:

high-risk onshore transfers between providers
clusters of providers with very high cancellation and course-hopping rates
non-genuine or “ghost” campuses
misuse of supplementary courses and short programs to keep students technically visa-compliant without progressing their main course
phoenixing behaviour where owners exit one collapsed provider only to reappear behind another.

The 2017 integrity reforms were designed to stop some of this behaviour by:

giving regulators stronger powers to refuse and cancel registrations
strengthening financial viability monitoring
making it easier to identify and act on unscrupulous practices.

In that sense, the intent behind the 2025 Bill - more transparency around agents, a stronger fit-and-proper test, better offshore oversight - is grounded in real problems. The integrity question is not about whether we need reform, but how it is being done.

Education agents and commissions: transparency or overreach?

The area generating the most heat in recent weeks is Part 1 of the Bill: education agents and commissions.

What the Bill is trying to do

The Bill:

replaces the old definition of “agent” with a new definition of “education agent” that focuses on the activities a third party carries out, rather than purely on formal contractual status
introduces a defined concept of “education agent commissions”
gives the government power to collect and share more information about agent commissions
improves the transparency of education agent information that is available to providers.

Alongside this, the government has flagged changes to the National Code that will prohibit payment of commissions when students switch between CRICOS providers onshore, targeting aggressive “poaching” behaviour and churn.

Under the new definition, an “education agent” is essentially any non-employee entity that:

recruits overseas students
provides them with information or advice about enrolment
or otherwise deals with them on behalf of a provider.

In principle, this makes sense. If the sector is worried about agent behaviour and commission-driven recruitment, regulators need visibility of who is being paid what, by whom, for which students. The current opacity is itself a risk.

Why this could be a step forward

No one seriously disputes that agents play a crucial role in recruitment, particularly in VET and private higher education. Many agents do excellent, student-centred work. But the Nixon review and multiple inquiries highlighted serious concerns about:

misleading marketing
lack of transparency about commissions
per-head incentives that reward volume over quality
conflicts of interest where agents are effectively deciding on course choice and provider, not just giving information.

Better transparency of agent performance and commission levels could:

give providers a clearer picture of which agents are associated with poor student outcomes or non-genuine enrolments
make it easier for regulators to target “high-risk” networks
help students and families to identify which agents are actually acting in their interests
level the playing field for providers who refuse to pay extreme commissions.

If implemented well, this has the potential to reward good agents, shine a light on bad behaviour, and reduce incentives for quick commission-driven churn between providers.

Universities Australia and English Australia: when a definition nets everyone

However, there are real concerns emerging from peak bodies.

Universities Australia and English Australia have both argued that the proposed definition of “education agent” risks being far too broad. As they point out, under the Bill:

any entity that provides information or assistance to a prospective overseas student about enrolment could be captured, even if they are not formally representing a provider or receiving a commission
that could include alumni who casually share their experience with prospective students, government agencies like Austrade that promote Australian education, or independent organisations that host information sessions without a formal recruitment role
providers use a range of contracting models globally - contractors, subsidiaries, marketing partners, pathway partners - and drawing the line simply around “not a permanent employee” risks pulling legitimate arrangements into an overly burdensome regime.

The risk here is not just extra paperwork. It is that the compliance signal becomes noisy. If almost everyone is technically an “agent”, it becomes harder to focus regulatory attention on the genuinely high-risk parts of the agent network.

Commission reporting: transparency, confidentiality and workload

Most stakeholders support, at least in principle, greater transparency around commissions. But submissions to the Senate inquiry raised consistent concerns:

the administrative load of detailed, frequent reporting, especially for small and medium CRICOS RTOs and ELICOS colleges
how commercially sensitive information will be protected, and whether data will be aggregated or might inadvertently reveal provider-by-provider commission strategies to competitors
how commission information will be interpreted - for example, whether higher-than-average commissions will automatically be treated as a red flag, even where there is a clear quality rationale, such as specialist markets, high-touch counselling or niche programs.

Some, including large players like IDP, have suggested that agents should be able to see and correct the data recorded about them. Otherwise, inaccurate reporting could unfairly damage reputations and drive regulatory decisions.

For providers, there is a genuine fear that the cost and complexity of getting this reporting right will absorb resources that could otherwise fund student support or teaching.

At the same time, we should not lose sight of the upside. If data is collected sensibly and interpreted carefully, commission transparency could:

give regulators early warning of outlier behaviours
create a more level playing field by discouraging extreme commission offers
empower students and governments in source countries to ask tougher questions about who is being paid to do what.

The challenge is calibration. At present, many in the sector - and many students - feel that calibration has not been clearly explained.

The “sub-agent” problem

One practical concern is that these reforms may not fully solve the “sub-agent” issue.

Many of the worst practices identified internationally involve sub-agents and informal networks that sit behind the headline agency. If data collection and contractual responsibility only sit at the first tier, some of the most problematic behaviours may simply move one step further into the shadows.

Unless providers and regulators insist on transparency and due diligence down the chain, we risk building a sophisticated reporting system that maps only half of the real network.

A tougher “fit and proper” test for providers

The Bill strengthens the “fit and proper provider” requirements for CRICOS registration.

Regulators must now explicitly consider:

the ownership and control relationships between a provider and any education agents
whether the provider, or related persons, are being investigated for specified offences.

The positives

This is partly a response to phoenixing and collusive behaviour between some providers and agents. The patterns are familiar:

an owner with a poor compliance history closes one college and reappears in another, sometimes under a slightly different name
the same individuals sit behind several entities that feed students to each other
agent and provider ownership is intertwined in a way that makes genuine independent advice to students impossible.

Requiring ESOS agencies to look at these links when assessing whether an organisation is “fit and proper” is sensible. It gives regulators more explicit grounds to refuse registrations from groups that have clearly used the system in ways that harm students and the sector’s reputation.

It also sends a clear message that integrity is about the whole ecosystem, not just the conduct of a single legal entity in isolation.

The concerns

At the same time, important questions arise about fairness and proportionality.

The test is triggered not only by proven wrongdoing but also by being under investigation for a specified offence. For a legitimate provider or owner, an investigation that is later resolved with no finding of guilt could still have serious consequences for business planning, banking relationships and reputation.
Ownership structures in modern education can be complex. Corporate groups may own multiple entities across VET, higher education, publishing, accommodation and related services. Simply having common owners is not, in itself, evidence of collusion or poor integrity.

Sector bodies and legal commentators have emphasised that the “fit and proper” test must be applied in a way that is grounded in evidence, not guilt by association, and that reasons for decisions are transparent and open to review.

If integrity becomes a label attached without clear reasoning, it will lose credibility and invite challenge.

New hurdles for CRICOS registration and provider activity

Another major change for RTOs and private higher education providers is a new set of rules governing who can enter and remain in the CRICOS market.

The Bill:

requires most prospective VET providers, excluding TAFEs, to first deliver courses to domestic students for two years before they can apply to enrol overseas students
allows the Minister to pause the making or processing of new CRICOS registration applications (for providers or courses) for defined periods
automatically cancels CRICOS registration where a provider has not delivered any registered course to any overseas student at any onshore location for 12 consecutive months
prevents providers who are under serious regulatory investigation from recruiting or teaching new overseas students.

Why do many see these as overdue?

From a student protection and migration integrity perspective, there are clear benefits.

Requiring a track record of at least two years of domestic delivery before a VET provider can seek CRICOS registration is intended to avoid the “pop-up college” model, where a business with no genuine educational history enters the international market purely to monetise visas.

Automatic cancellation of dormant registrations targets the practice of holding “shell” CRICOS approvals that can be switched on when market conditions change or sold as a licence asset rather than reflecting genuine ongoing delivery.

Giving the Minister and regulators powers to pause new registrations or stop providers under serious investigation from recruiting overseas students aims to prevent situations where risky providers continue enrolling large numbers of students while serious compliance concerns are still being examined.

All of these measures are designed to avoid another cycle of rapid growth followed by a wave of cancellations, visa issues and student harm that damage Australia’s international education brand.

The other side of the ledger

However, these rules also raise difficult issues that deserve open discussion.

Barriers to new, high-quality entrants

Not every new provider is a “shonk” or a “ghost college”.

Good quality, specialist institutions may wish to establish in Australia specifically to serve international cohorts, for example, in:

niche creative fields
advanced technology programs
English language transition or pathway models.

The two-year domestic history requirement in VET risks creating a structural bias in favour of existing providers and large public institutions.

A genuine new provider may have to:

invest heavily for two years in domestic delivery, possibly in a market where it has no natural base
delay international partnerships and student pipelines, weakening its business case
compete with established CRICOS providers who did not face the same barrier when they entered the market.

Sector groups have welcomed the integrity goals but warned that this requirement must be applied sensibly, with clear exemptions or tailored approaches where there is strong evidence of quality, capital investment and governance.

Automatic cancellation and the reality of shocks

The last decade has reminded us that external shocks are real: border closures, natural disasters, geopolitical events and policy changes in key source countries can all lead to sudden drops in enrolments.

A rule that automatically cancels CRICOS registration if no overseas students are taught for 12 months assumes that inactivity is always a sign of risk or bad intention. In practice, a provider may be:

temporarily restructuring courses or delivery models
rebuilding after a campus move, merger or acquisition
recovering from an external shock that has temporarily reduced demand.

If the only option is automatic cancellation followed by a fresh application, genuine providers could face unnecessary disruption and cost.

The sector has argued that any automatic mechanism must include built-in flexibility for clearly documented exceptional circumstances.

Ministerial pause powers and business certainty

Allowing the Minister to pause the processing of registration applications or new courses for up to a year is described as a way to give regulators breathing space during periods of systemic risk.

Used carefully and transparently, a temporary pause can be a legitimate regulatory tool. Used poorly, it can create significant uncertainty for investors, institutions and international partners who may have spent years planning a new campus or program only to find the regulatory gate closed mid-process.

Peak bodies have emphasised the need for clear guardrails around these powers to avoid ministerial overreach, and to ensure that decisions are grounded in public, evidence-based criteria rather than short-term political pressures.

New powers to cancel classes of courses

Another headline change is the power for the Minister for Education to cancel an entire class of courses delivered to overseas students, where:

there are systemic issues with the standard of delivery
the courses provide limited value to Australia’s current, emerging or future skills and training needs and priorities
or it is otherwise in the public interest to do so.

In other words, the government can now target not only individual providers but also whole categories of courses that are seen as low value or associated with integrity risk.

Potential benefits

This is an attempt to deal with a pattern we have seen repeatedly: clusters of courses in certain fields that become magnets for providers chasing quick enrolments or migration outcomes rather than building genuine skills.

If evidence shows that a particular course:

produces very poor student outcomes
has high rates of early withdrawal or visa non-compliance
contributes little to workforce needs or national priorities,

Then, giving the Minister a tool to shut down that pathway across the system can be justified.

The government has pointed to the need to align international education more closely with workforce priorities and to move away from “junk” courses that offer little value for students or the economy.

Why the sector pushed for safeguards

This has been one of the most sensitive parts of the legislation, because course choice goes directly to academic autonomy, market diversity and long-term investment decisions.

Universities and independent providers raised concerns that a broad power to cancel classes of courses could:

create sovereign risk for long-term investments in new programs
discourage innovation in emerging fields where labour market data is still evolving
be influenced by short-term political or media pressures rather than stable, evidence-based skills planning.

Through the committee process, sector groups lobbied strongly for amendments to tighten these powers, require consultation and parliamentary oversight, and focus them on genuinely high-risk areas rather than allowing arbitrary or discriminatory decisions.

The government ultimately accepted several Senate amendments that introduced extra safeguards and exemptions. For example, Table A universities have been exempted from automatic course cancellation provisions, on the basis that they already operate within strong quality assurance and accreditation systems. This has been welcomed by groups like the Group of Eight as better targeting the regulation at areas of genuine concern while avoiding unnecessary red tape where risk is lower.

The final shape of these powers will matter greatly. Used sparingly with robust evidence, they may help clean up systemic risk. Used widely or without clear standards, they could undermine confidence across the sector.

TEQSA’s offshore powers: protecting reputation or adding red tape?

Part 9 of the Bill deals with a different integrity problem: how Australian degrees are delivered offshore.

Under the new provisions, TEQSA will:

require providers to seek specific authorisation for offshore delivery of Australian awards
require notification of substantive changes to offshore delivery
require regular reporting on each offshore course
have the power to attach conditions, vary them and cancel offshore authorisation where necessary.

TEQSA’s rationale is straightforward: when an offshore campus or partner delivers poor-quality education, the reputational damage flows back to the Australian system as a whole, not just that provider. The agency has explicitly stated that poor offshore delivery by even a small number of providers undermines trust in all Australian transnational education.

From an integrity perspective, that argument is strong. However, universities - particularly self-accrediting institutions with mature internal quality systems - have raised concerns about:

duplication of oversight on top of existing internal and professional accreditation frameworks
additional administrative burden in reporting for multiple jurisdictions
the risk that TEQSA’s conditions may cut across local regulatory approvals or cultural expectations in host countries.

Providers are not arguing against the aim of protecting quality offshore. They are worried that centralised, Canberra-based control may not always understand the nuance of each local partnership.

Here, again, the question is calibration. With clear, risk-based thresholds, offshore oversight can be a safety net. Without them, it risks becoming another layer of compliance in an already complex web.

Consultation, integrity and the missing student voice

If this Bill is fundamentally about “integrity”, we also need to talk about how it was developed.

Peak bodies: ignored feedback and “rebadged” measures

Articles summarising submissions to the Senate inquiry have highlighted sharp criticisms from peak bodies:

The Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA) has described parts of the Bill as “rebadged and poorly drafted measures” and criticised the lack of genuine engagement with the sector before introduction.
English Australia has argued that the Bill fails to establish effective mechanisms to support long-term integrity, weakens ESOS agencies, lacks evidence that its measures will work, and risks driving away investment in quality and innovation.

When sector peak bodies say that their 2024 feedback on agent definitions and other design questions has largely been ignored in the 2025 version, we should pay attention.

Coalition Senators, while not ultimately blocking the Bill, have called for a statutory review after implementation, pointing to concerns about proportionality, regulatory coherence and evidence-based design.

A rare student voice - and why that matters

Against this backdrop, one detail in the Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee report stands out: the only student organisation cited in full is the International Students Representative Council of Australia (ISRC).

ISRC highlighted issues that international students repeatedly raise informally:

opaque and often excessive commissions
per-head and percentage-based recruitment incentives
pressure to enrol in unsuitable courses or providers
the lack of independent, student-led representation in policy design and governance.

It is welcome that ISRC’s submission was acknowledged. But the fact that a single student organisation is the only one quoted in detail underlines how underdeveloped student voice remains in this space.

If we are serious about building an integrity-driven system, international students cannot just be data points or survey responses. They must be co-designers of the policy and governance framework.

In other words, integrity is not only about provider behaviour. It is also about how governments consult, listen and share power with those who are most affected.

Necessary oversight or bureaucratic overreach? A balanced view

So, where does all this leave us?

The case for “necessary oversight”

On the positive side, the Bill:

directly addresses well-documented integrity risks around agents, commissions and provider ownership structures
strengthens the fit-and-proper test so regulators can look beyond a narrow legal checklist and consider links to high-risk agents or investigations for serious offences
requires new VET CRICOS providers (aside from TAFEs) to demonstrate a domestic track record before recruiting overseas students, which should reduce the “pop-up” provider problem
gives TEQSA the tools to protect the reputation of Australian offshore programs when things go wrong
allows classes of clearly low-value or high-risk courses to be cancelled where there is strong evidence
helps shut down shell registrations that are not delivering any courses to overseas students.

Independent Higher Education Australia, for example, has welcomed Senate amendments that added guardrails to ministerial powers, introduced exemptions, and improved fairness provisions, even while acknowledging the Bill is not perfect.

For international students, if implemented well, these measures could mean:

fewer fly-by-night providers entering the market
more transparent relationships between providers and agents
better quality control in offshore campuses and partnership arrangements
stronger enforcement tools when things go wrong.

The Bill also contains positive measures outside ESOS, such as removing caps on Commonwealth-supported places in medicine for First Nations students. Universities Australia and others have rightly welcomed this as a genuine step towards a more representative health workforce and better outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

And importantly, the government dropped the idea of hard legislative caps on international enrolments. Growth is now being managed through other policy levers, which many see as more flexible and less likely to cause blunt damage.

The case for “bureaucratic overreach”

On the other hand, there are real risks and unresolved questions.

An overly broad “education agent” definition could pull in alumni volunteers, government agencies, contractors and anyone who answers a student’s question about enrolment. That dilutes focus and increases red tape without necessarily improving integrity.
Commission reporting could become a compliance industry in itself, diverting resources from teaching and support. If not carefully designed, it may also compromise commercially sensitive information without delivering meaningful insights.
The power to cancel classes of courses on broad “public interest” or “skills needs” grounds, even with recent safeguards, raises legitimate questions about proportionality and predictability.
New CRICOS entry and activity rules may create barriers for high-quality new entrants and penalise providers temporarily impacted by external shocks.
TEQSA’s offshore oversight, while defensible in principle, may feel like another layer of central control imposed on universities already navigating multiple regulators and local partners.
Smaller high-quality providers may struggle to absorb the costs and complexity of these reforms, potentially accelerating a quiet consolidation towards only the largest or oldest institutions.

Perhaps the deepest integrity question, however, is about process. When peak bodies say their earlier feedback has been ignored, when English Australia notes that “the vast majority” of consultation feedback appears to have been set aside, and when only one independent student organisation is quoted in the final committee report, it is hard to escape the sense that the Bill’s own pathway through Parliament has not modelled the kind of transparent, inclusive governance it seeks to impose on others.

Key risks and unresolved questions for providers

Bringing this together, several big questions remain for consultants, RTO leaders and international managers:

Will the new powers be used proportionately? Integrity legislation always looks reasonable when drafted with “shonks and crooks” in mind. The real test is how it is applied to borderline cases, providers with mixed histories, and genuinely innovative models that do not fit the traditional template.
How will regulators balance speed and fairness? The power to pause applications, cancel dormant registrations and restrict high-risk providers can contain emerging problems, but it can also leave providers in limbo. Transparent criteria, published reasons and realistic timeframes will be essential.
Can smaller, high-quality providers still thrive? Large universities and TAFEs are better placed to absorb new compliance costs, restructure ownership and manage complex agent data. Smaller CRICOS RTOs and independent colleges often operate with lean teams and tight margins. The risk is a regulatory environment where only very large or very old institutions can survive, reducing choice and innovation for students.
Will data on agents actually change behaviour? Collecting information on commissions and agent performance is only the first step. The real integrity gain will come if providers routinely terminate relationships with high-risk agents, and if regulators are willing to act decisively when patterns of poor behaviour emerge.
How will “limited value” courses be defined in practice? The notion of cancelling classes of courses that add little to skills priorities sounds simple, but skills needs can change quickly. Many areas once seen as low priority, such as data analytics or cybersecurity, are now central to planning. Decisions will need to be based on robust evidence and proper consultation, not headlines.
Will international students genuinely have a seat at the table? ISRC’s experience shows that student voices can influence parliamentary debate, but one quoted submission is not enough. Embedding independent, student-led representation into the ongoing design and review of the system will be critical if integrity is to be student-centred rather than purely compliance-centred.

What RTOs, CRICOS providers and universities should do now

While everyone waits for detailed guidance, National Code changes and TEQSA practice notes, there are concrete steps that providers can start taking now.

Map your agent network and commission data in detail. Identify not just your contracted agents, but any third parties who might fall within the new “education agent” definition - subcontractors, marketing partners, onshore brokers. Make sure you know who you are paying, at what rate, and for which students.
Stress-test your commission structures. Ask whether your current commission levels are justifiable in terms of value, student outcomes and integrity. Consider whether money could be reallocated towards academic and support services without undermining your ability to recruit. Where commissions are high, be ready to explain why.
Review ownership and control structures. If you share owners or directors with other education entities or agents, ensure that governance arrangements are clear, documented and defensible. Anticipate questions about related parties and conflicts of interest.
Strengthen fit-and-proper and governance processes. Make it easy for regulators to see that your governance is active, independent and transparent. This includes robust compliance committees, proper minutes, risk registers and clear escalation pathways.
Build a TEQSA-ready offshore quality framework. If you already deliver or plan to deliver offshore, start preparing for the new authorisation regime. Clarify roles and responsibilities, embed systematic monitoring of teaching quality and student outcomes, and ensure data systems can report reliably on offshore delivery.
Embed international student voice in your internal governance. Set up advisory groups, boards or forums where international students can raise issues directly with decision-makers. Take their feedback seriously and document how it affects policy and practice.
Stress test your business model under different regulatory scenarios. Consider how your organisation would cope with a 12-month pause on registrations, an automatic cancellation rule, or a class cancellation affecting some of your core courses. Identify mitigation strategies now.
Invest in compliance capability. Integrity reforms will not be “set and forget”. Ongoing monitoring, internal audits, training and external review will be essential. Under-resourcing compliance in this environment is not a saving; it is a risk.
Engage with sector bodies and the implementation process. The experience of the 2024 and 2025 Bills shows that collective advocacy can materially shape outcomes. Continue providing evidence, case studies and constructive proposals through organisations like IHEA, English Australia, peak VET groups and student bodies.

Integrity must be more than a slogan

At its heart, the Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025 is trying to answer a simple public question: can Australians trust that our international education system is genuine, high-quality and not being used as a back door to migration abuse?

For too long, a small but damaging minority of providers and agents have made that question harder to answer. In that sense, many of the integrity measures in this Bill are not only understandable but overdue.

Yet integrity cannot come at any cost. A regulatory system that treats every provider as a potential suspect, concentrates power without transparent safeguards, or discourages new high-quality entrants would ultimately damage the sector it is meant to protect.

International education in Australia is worth tens of billions of dollars a year to the economy. More importantly, it is worth far more in human terms to the students, families, communities and industries that rely on it.

The challenge now is to ensure that this new ESOS and TEQSA framework is implemented in a way that:

genuinely targets those who exploit students and the migration system
supports and rewards providers who invest in quality and student welfare
embeds international student voice as a permanent feature of governance
preserves a diverse, innovative and globally respected international education system.

Transparency about agents and commissions is overdue. Stronger fit-and-proper tests are necessary.

Oversight of offshore delivery is sensible. But integrity cannot be delivered purely by expanding ministerial and regulatory powers or by adding new reporting lines. It also requires:

careful drafting that targets real risks rather than sweeping everyone into the net
genuine, ongoing consultation with providers and students
a willingness to review and adjust when measures create new problems or unintended consequences.

The Bill carries “integrity” in its title.

Over the next few years, we will see whether that promise is realised in practice, or whether the sector experiences it mainly as bureaucratic overreach.

Our job, collectively, is to push the implementation towards the former.

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this article are my own, based on my interpretation of the Education Legislation Amendment (Integrity and Other Measures) Bill 2025, the ESOS Act, associated explanatory materials and publicly available sector commentary at the time of writing. They are provided for general information and discussion within the Australian VET and higher education sectors and do not constitute legal, regulatory or professional advice.

Organisations should not rely on this content as the sole basis for compliance decisions. You should refer directly to the relevant legislation, regulations, standards and official guidance, and seek your own independent legal or compliance advice where appropriate.