Risk Ratings and Completion Rates

Immigration has lots of data on students and education providers, and the process of registering agents on PRISMS is starting to provide information on them as well. Immigration uses the information to assign Risk Ratings to colleges, and it seems possible they’ll apply similar rules to education agents as well.

Different countries are given a Risk Rating based on how their students have behaved in the recent past. If lots of student disappear, then their rating goes up and it’s harder to get a student visa. If their students behave well, that county’s Risk Rating goes down, and a visa is (generally) easier to get. (Of course the case officers can look at individual cases, but it seems at times as if visas are granted automatically if the right criteria are met.)

Colleges are given Risk Ratings too. Although a new rating comes out every month, Immigration changes the rating they use only twice a year! The rating on 1st December applies from 1st April to end of September. (then the rating for June applies from 1st October to 31st March.) it’s kind of a ‘blunt instrument’, but it works.

It’s very important for an agent to know the Risk Ratings for their countries and the colleges they work with, because you can’t counsel a potential student completely if you don’t know. Fortunately, Immigration provides a tool that tells you what you’ll need to provide. We’ve worked out the ratings of everyone we work with, so if you need some help just ask.

We’ve analysed our reports very closely, and taken actions so that we are now locked on level 2, and we know how to get to level one.

The statistics on agents are very interesting: the only official report we get is the ‘Completion Rate’ for each agent. How many CoEs by agent, start their course and finish it. We flip it around and call it the ‘Failure Rate’. How many students from each agent didn’t end up doing what they said they would do? In some cases the results have been excellent, and in the others disappointing. Our actions are informed by our analysis: We stop sending information and promotions to agents with very high failure rates. We review any applications from them very carefully.

So when a student enrols for Diploma of Business and suddenly ‘discovers’ they always wanted to be a chef that change has an effect on an agents ‘Completion RATE’.

It’s certainly interesting…..