The federal government has made changes to international student visa processing. A move that has been welcomed by regional and smaller universities across the country, including Southern Cross University (SCU).

The Government will replace Ministerial Direction 107 with Ministerial Direction 111. The changes will give regional and smaller unis fairer access to international students.

SCU Vice-Chancellor Tyrone Carlin told the Lismore App that Ministerial Direction 107 was regarded as very damaging to SCU and other regional universities.

"Our strong view to government was in the absence of your legislation for caps, you know that 107 is doing enormous damage to regional universities. You know that it is privileging a small group of very well-established metro institutions. That connection between the passage of the caps legislation and the removal of 107 is just untenable. And I'm really happy that they've heeded that and moved on to what is now Directive 111.

Ministerial Direction 111 basically means that people from overseas applying for a student visa are now being prioritised to join regional universities, like SCU, whereas 107 deprioritised them and prioritised a city uni in Sydney or Melbourne.

"So, that means that for the immediate future, the visa applications that will be lodged by applicants to Southern Cross University will be accorded the same priority as for all other universities. Now, that state of affairs doesn't go forever. It lasts until you reach a certain threshold of volume. But for us, for the commencement of next year, just in our own case, that's a really, really helpful boost to the year.

"And then once you get above the magic 80% of your notional cap target, they're still referring back to the caps that they would have liked to legislate for, but they cannot enforce these on a hard basis, then all they do is they revert the priority that is accorded to processing visas for your institution back to what they call standard.

"Now, we don't know exactly what that means yet. But, the first part of that equation is clearly more favourable for us than the predecessor regime, and it seems to me that the second part of that equation can't be any less favourable. So, the net for an institution like Southern Cross, that's good news."

In terms of the Lismore, that should mean more international students on campus.

"One of the really pleasing things for us because we've introduced a new Masters of Nursing Program that's being offered here at Lismore for the first time in 2025, is we're seeing a more than doubling of our anticipated international students who'll be coming to study at Lismore in 2025.

"And that's even at this early stage. So, with the relaxation of the visa regime, that will give us still more opportunity to try and get people to come to Lismore. And that's a good thing from my perspective."

That is a good thing, not only for SCU but also for Lismore itself.