Shortened work rights ‘complicate’ skills drive

Global moves to shorten post-study work rights may exacerbate skill shortages unless host countries address the cultural problems preventing graduates from obtaining meaningful work experience, Australian experts believe.

Deakin University international education researcher Ly Tran said “prejudice” towards foreign students and graduates was on the rise in Australia. She said a common response from employers, when asked why they had not hired locally trained foreigners, was, “Why buy in the burden?”

“They see it as a burden, unfortunately,” Professor Tran said. “Despite the rhetoric about skill shortages, they still have reasonable supply and they don’t understand the international student and graduate cohort.”

Australia’s new migration strategy reduces overseas students’ post-graduation work rights to two or three years, down from four-, five- and six-year entitlements that came into force in July. Canada is also cutting graduate work rights to a three-year maximum, with 18-month extensions offered since 2021 now set to end.

This brings both countries’ work rights regimes roughly in line with arrangements in the US and New Zealand, which also allow up to three years. Meanwhile, the UK is reviewing the automatic two-year post-study work visa it reintroduced only 30 months ago.

Professor Tran said such changes would not help international graduates accrue the job experience they needed to help plug the shortages of high-skilled workers in Western economies. A 2019 study she led found that two-year work visas were too short to give employers the confidence to hire foreigners, and durations of three or four years were better.

Research since then suggests that by themselves, longer visa durations are not enough. Professor Tran and colleagues George Tan and Xuchun Liu analysed 2021 Australian census data and found that 88 per cent of graduate work visa holders were employed, up from 76 per cent in 2016. However, about 40 per cent had low-skilled jobs typically in retail, hospitality, cleaning or driving.

She said that while education providers and employer bodies were trying to support international graduates’ integration into the workforce, these efforts tended to lack coordination. Timing was also problematic, with employability support often provided in the middle of courses although it was particularly needed “right after their graduation”.

Tertiary education consultant Claire Field said there were “commonalities” in the cultural barriers that prevented international graduates in Australia, Britain and Canada from securing meaningful work. In Australia, around half of people with post-study work visas were in jobs that did not even require higher school qualifications.

“Cleaning bathrooms or delivering pizzas [is] not work that these young people and their families have invested all that money in a higher education for. Are we doing the right thing by those graduates to have them here endlessly trying to find the right opportunity? The longer they spend doing very casual, low-skilled work, the less employable they become for graduate-level positions.”

Ms Field said hopes had been raised by Australia’s proposed four-year “skills in demand” visa for migrants with “specialist”, “core” or “essential” skills. The migration strategy says it will provide “clear pathways” to permanent residence and less “onerous” conditions for employers and workers alike.

“If that pathway really works as intended…it changes the equation for employers and graduates,” Ms Field said. “In theory, it’s a really good step [but we have to] wait and see how the Department of Home Affairs implements it.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com