Survey data on APTC graduates show that the principal constraint on migration, by far, is not the demand to migrate but the supply of opportunities to migrate.. The APTC arose from press
Low prevalence of migration
Migration of APTC graduates remains extremely limited Table 1 provides a snapshot of the cumulative number of APTC graduates residing outside their country of citizenship in 2011, 2012, and 2013 Overall, only 1.2% of APTC graduates live in Australia or New Zealand, and a small additional share—bringing the total leaving their country of citizenship to 1.5%—migrate between Pacific islands New graduates migrate at even lower rates: between July 2012 and March 2013 the APTC recorded 988 new graduations but only 4 new migrations, all to Australia, representing about 0.4% of new graduates.
Swanton and Ong (2013) surveyed 904 of the 4,804 graduates who had completed the APTC roughly four years earlier (2007–2011) and found that 3.3% had moved to a different country by October–November 2013 The estimate covers all destinations abroad and does not provide a separate figure for moves to Australia and New Zealand If the same fraction of international movers in this survey headed to Australia/New Zealand as in the Tracer Surveys reported in Table 1, about 2.6% of the 2007–2011 graduates would have relocated to Australia or New Zealand by 2013.
High demand for migration
Existing data do not permit a statistically rigorous assessment of international migration desire among APTC graduates The Graduate Tracer Survey does not include a question on migration desire, and although Swanton and Ong examine migration intent, their survey does not distinguish between domestic and international migration.
We can place a conservative lower bound on APTC graduates’ demand for international migration using existing data Table 2 of the Graduate Tracer Survey shows that 58 of the 1,067 respondents expressed a desire to migrate in their open-ended responses to questions unrelated to migration, with migration primarily directed at Australia and New Zealand; no respondent mentions a destination without referencing Australia and/or New Zealand Table 2 includes only responses where migration interest is unequivocal, such as “Please give me a chance to work in Australia,” “I would really like to work overseas due to better working conditions,” or “APTC to assist in placement to work in Australia.” This yields a migration interest of 5.4% of respondents, which is 4.5 times the 1.2% of graduates who actually migrate to Australia or New Zealand.
The true desire to migrate is likely higher than 5.4% because this figure only captures migration mentions that were made without any prompting Respondents were not asked about migration; all such comments emerged spontaneously in response to unrelated questions, such as whether they would take another APTC course or whether they had any other comments to offer Some responses highlight migration demand among their peers, noting that “mostly local people now migrate overseas, so completing APTC courses is seen as a must to help them move to places like New Zealand or Australia.”
How much higher is the true demand for migration? The data reported by Swanton and Ong
In 2013, a survey of APTC graduates who had completed their studies 2–6 years earlier asked whether, in the future, they intended to move to another country or region for work Respondents were informed that “region” referred to a different part of the same country, so the question covered both domestic and international mobility A large majority—86.1%—answered “agree” or “strongly agree.”
About 6.2% of respondents had already relocated to either another country or another region; within this group, roughly half moved abroad (3.3%) and the other half moved to a different region within the same country (2.9%) If migration intent among non-migrants mirrors the migration behavior of prior migrants, then roughly half of those who express the intent to move would aim to relocate internationally, equating to about 43% of the 2007–2011 graduates surveyed in 2013.
This estimate is likely a conservative lower bound because international migration barriers to realizing migration plans are higher than those faced by domestic migrants, and it also undercounts overall migration interest when desire to migrate exceeds reported intent; in practice, most people who do not want to migrate will not report an intent to migrate, but some individuals with a genuine desire to move may refrain from reporting intent if they perceive insurmountable barriers that prevent them from planning.
The exact proportion of APTC graduates wishing to migrate cannot be known without a purpose-built survey of APTC graduates Such data would have been useful to collect, given the important role of labor mobility in the project’s original goals However, external data provide grounds to support the argument that migration demand is much higher than current measurements indicate.
Across most countries, about 14% of adults say they would permanently leave their home country to live elsewhere if given the opportunity, with the share higher in poorer nations Emigration is especially pronounced among small island states, particularly in the Pacific region Migration programs to New Zealand, such as the Pacific Access Category visa lottery for Kiribati, Tonga, and Tuvalu, are vastly oversubscribed—about 900%—while the separate Samoan Quota Scheme is oversubscribed by roughly 1,600%.
Statistics from Gibson, McKenzie, and Stillman (2013) do not automatically apply to APTC graduates However, they suggest it would not be unreasonable to think that the number of APTC graduates who express a desire to migrate internationally far exceeds the number who actually migrate—potentially by an order of magnitude.
This analysis shows that the key bottleneck for international migration among APTC graduates is not their willingness to migrate, but the limited supply of migration opportunities We now turn to the supply-side factors that constrain these opportunities, including visa quotas, credential recognition, destination-country labor demand, and administrative barriers that restrict access for qualified APTC graduates to move abroad.
Supply of migration opportunities
Australia represents the largest labor market adjacent to the Pacific Island region, with two main employment-based visa options for APTC graduates seeking to move there: (i) unsponsored permanent skilled migration visas, and (ii) temporary, employer-sponsored visas This subsection assesses the feasibility and pathways for APTC graduates to access these visa routes, highlighting the criteria, processes, and potential outcomes for both permanent and temporary stays.
APTC graduates face limited and diminishing opportunities to migrate to Australia through the unsponsored, points-based General Skilled Migration (GSM) pathway, also known as the Skilled‑Independent visa This track allows applicants to apply for a settler visa without sponsorship from Australian employers or family members if they meet a required points threshold Points are awarded for factors such as age and English language proficiency GSM applicants must also undergo a skills assessment for their nominated occupation, as mandated by DIAC (2011).
APTC graduates could in principle enter Australia on permanent employer‑sponsored skilled settler visas, but the process is costly and burdensome for Australian employers, who are extremely unlikely to sponsor such visas for a graduate with whom they do not already have an established relationship Building that relationship would usually require the graduate to have found another way to enter Australia and work there, making permanent employer sponsorship a practical obstacle for many APTC graduates.
For APTC graduates, the critical limiting factor appears to have been the difficulty for graduates to obtain Australian recognition of skills and experience acquired abroad, rather than recognition of the APTC diploma itself We evaluate the potential for unsponsored settler migration of APTC graduates in Table 3, which uses two versions of the points system, with the left side of the table using the points system in place from the birth of the APTC in 2007 until 2009.
In early 2010, a major revision of the points system was implemented based on a comprehensive review by Birrell, Hawthorne, and Richardson (2006) Consequently, the right-hand side of the figure now reflects the points system that has been in effect from 2010 to the present.
Without recognition of overseas work experience in their profession, APTC graduates cannot reach the points threshold The upper half of Table 3 lists the points APTC graduates of different ages could attain without recognizing overseas skills and experience, with columns representing age groups and the second row showing the share of all APTC enrollees in each age range While points exist for various traits beyond those shown (such as certification as a professional interpreter of a community language like Fijian), these are largely irrelevant for nearly all APTC graduates The subtotal row remains far below the points threshold, both before and after the 2009 revision of the points system.
One key finding is that an APTC graduate who could show three years of work experience that is fully recognized in Australia would have had a real chance of meeting the points threshold before the 2009 points-system overhaul; however, after the revision, only about one in three graduates could achieve it According to the lower rows of Table 3, before 2009 the majority of graduates with three years of recognized overseas experience would have qualified, while those over 40—roughly 32%—would have needed something additional beyond three years of recognized experience, such as extra years of work or state nomination, to qualify.
Following the 2009 revisions to the points system, many APTC graduates with substantial, recognized experience could still qualify if that experience is recognized in Australia APTC graduates aged 25–32 (about 35%) with eight years of recognized work experience could meet the points threshold based on experience alone Older graduates (33–44, about 40%) would find it more difficult, but could reach the threshold with either state nomination or one year of Australian work experience Graduates in other age groups cannot meet the threshold.
When their skills and experience were recognized in Australia, about two-thirds of APTC graduates could have met the points threshold before the 2009 revision, with most graduates aged 18–39 having more than three years of work experience and many with eight years After the revision, even with recognition, somewhat less than one-third of graduates could meet the threshold—specifically the subset aged 25–32 who also had eight years of experience.
Employer-sponsored temporary migration in Australia relies on a formal mechanism for recognizing overseas skills and experience The principal employer-sponsored visa available to APTC graduates is the 457 visa for temporary skilled work, which allows foreign skilled workers to enter Australia for up to four years to work for a business that cannot fill the position with an Australian citizen or permanent resident Most trades workers applying for a 457 visa must pass a skills assessment conducted by a Registered Training Organisation (RTO) acting for Trades Recognition Australia (TRA).
Analysis to date highlights the central role of skill recognition in access to skilled migration and employment for APTC graduates An Australian-recognized qualification (certificate or diploma) issued to APTC graduates supports, but does not replace, formal skill recognition For many common APTC fields of study, including carpentry and cooking, each applicant must pass an in-person skills assessment conducted by a registered training organization (RTO) before they can obtain either a temporary or permanent employment-based visa, regardless of whether their qualification is Australian-recognized This section examines how challenging that assessment is for typical APTC graduates.
We center our analysis on cost as a central obstacle to skill recognition, noting that we lack sufficient information to gauge other barriers faced by APTC graduates—such as the burden of navigating the required bureaucratic steps and the reality that passing the skills assessment is not guaranteed We also estimate the overall cost of passing a skills assessment, while acknowledging that success is not assured and that additional non-monetary hurdles may influence outcomes.
Eight more could have met the threshold if they had a year of work experience in Australia or had been individually nominated by an Australian state government However, very few APTC graduates meet these criteria.
9 Australian Dept of Industry, “Pathway 2: Applicants who hold a relevant Australian qualification”, accessed Aug 10, 2013
Section 13 covers acquiring a work visa for graduates in the three fields most commonly studied at APTC—carpentry, cooking, and hospitality It provides country- and field-specific cost estimates: for carpentry, costs are estimated for graduates from Fiji and Papua New Guinea (PNG); for cooking, costs are estimated for graduates from Fiji (cooking courses are not offered in PNG); and for hospitality, costs are estimated for graduates from all campus countries.
Table 4 presents the estimated costs of skill recognition for APTC graduates, drawn from sources listed in the Appendix, with the RTO charging an initial fee of about A$600–800 and minimum travel expenses to Australia for in-person skills assessments estimated at A$858–1,054 (noting that hospitality workers can have their skills assessed by mail and avoid travel) A further technical interview fee is charged directly by the RTO, and the least expensive visa required to enter Australia for the skills assessment adds to the total, while the subtotal shows that the overall cost of the skills assessment is already substantial relative to average incomes in the campus countries referenced at the bottom of the table, with no refunds if the applicant fails the assessment.
Why was not more done to achieve APTC’s labour mobility objectives?
Aid spending worldwide responds to humanitarian goals, domestic political incentives, and geopolitical aims, not only to economic considerations We argue that political processes at the migration destination—Australia—and at the origin—Pacific island countries—are key determinants of the observed outcomes Our analysis proceeds from the destination to the origin, showing how policy choices and political dynamics at Australia influence aid flows and migration, while governance, political competition, and regional security concerns at Pacific island states shape how aid is allocated and migration is managed.
We observe very limited political commitment, in Australia, to the skill mobility goal of the APTC This is evident in six ways
Government statements on the APTC emphasize progress toward the skill creation goal while largely ignoring the failure to achieve the skill mobility goal The project’s mid-term review concluded that it was performing well against its stated goals and key results areas By contrast, neither the 2009 mid-term review nor the 2010 Phase II design notes discuss the very low migration rates, their implications, or compare them with migration rates analyzed in the Cost-Benefit Analysis contained in the same Phase II design document The latest APTC (2013b) annual report runs to 29,200 words, yet it does not adequately address migration outcomes.
Migration rates receive scant attention in the article: 18 devotes only 66 words to mentioning them, simply listing migrant numbers without comment or interpretation Successive Annual Portfolio Performance Reviews describe APTC in highly positive terms and label it a “green-light” project, i.e., a program without significant problems (AusAID 2012; DFAT 2013) Only one Australian government document—the Auditor General (2011, p 90)—appears to flag the extremely low migration by APTC graduates as a concern, and that critique is contained in a single paragraph written by an auditor external to AusAID.
AusAID's 2011 Pacific Education and Skills Development Agenda outlines four objectives for Australia's engagement in the development of education and skills in the Pacific Notably, none of these objectives mention labour mobility, a core goal of the APTC when it began operations four years prior.
Founding officials of the APTC say an early curriculum plan centered on nursing, a natural fit given Australia’s projected shortfall of about 100,000 nurses by 2025 The Pacific Islands Forum secretariat, which first proposed the APTC in 2005, commissioned a feasibility study for a regional nurse-training facility and AusAID conducted further internal analyses Ultimately, the option to include nursing in the curriculum was dropped due to political pressure from state and territory Nursing and Midwifery Boards, illustrating the sensitivity of the APTC’s international labor-mobility objective and signaling broader political challenges Australia faced in committing to the program’s mobility goals.
Fourth, a sizable portion of Australia’s political leadership remains unconvinced that migration is beneficial for the Pacific A 2010 Senate Inquiry into the Pacific acknowledged the brain drain issue in the region and, through Recommendation 10, called on AusAID to review its scholarships and the Australia-Pacific Technical College (APTC) to ensure these programs do not contribute to brain drain (APH 2011, pp 6–7).
Fifth, an extensive search has not found a single public statement by an Australian politician or bureaucrat since the Howard 2006 announcement relating to the APTC’s international mobility objective
A comprehensive search reveals no actions taken to investigate the causes of the failure to meet APTC's labour mobility goal or to implement remedial measures, either in response to the Auditor's comment or for any other reason.
Overall, there is compelling evidence that APTC’s international mobility goal lacked political salience, and the above facts offer no other plausible explanation The Government’s response to the Senate Inquiry encapsulates this lack of salience, stating that “anecdotal evidence” suggests that migration among APTC graduates has been limited.
This is the only official public acknowledgment that the APTC did not achieve its international mobility objective, and the admission, framed in defense of the project, exposes a lack of political commitment to the APTC’s founding goal of promoting migration, even three years after it began operations.
Despite its stated aim of promoting international mobility, the APTC faced graduates' limited migration in its early years, which prompted AusAID in Phase II to decouple the APTC course profile from Australian visa requirements; this decoupling meant training subjects need not be tightly tied to Australia’s shortage occupations, although substantial overlap remains between APTC subjects and Australia’s shortages The Phase II design documents describe an underlying rationale of facilitating regional labour mobility and even project higher migration rates within the economic costs and benefits analysis Today, the APTC website lists two purposes, the first of which is to provide Pacific Islander women and men with
Australian qualifications create opportunities to secure employment in targeted sectors both nationally and internationally, while also supporting skills development in the Pacific The retention of the international mobility objective remains a puzzling element, yet an examination of APTC materials suggests that the success of the labour mobility objective is defined not by actual migration, but by the awarding of Australian-recognized certificates, regardless of whether these credentials translate into international employment opportunities.
Politics at the origin—and connections to project design
Beyond these domestic political forces within Australia, we also observe a lack of political pressure from origin countries arising from the APTC’s inability to achieve its international
APTC's mobility goal was announced under pressure from PICS for greater international mobility; however, it soon became clear that the APTC was not delivering on this objective, prompting the question of why there was no subsequent outcry We offer two explanations.
The first is the advent of Australia’s Seasonal Worker Program (SWP) When the Labour Government was elected in 2007, it decided to create the SWP that the Coalition
The government opposed the initiative (Hay and Howes 2012) The APTC, as discussed in Section 3, was designed in part to appease Pacific Island Countries’ requests for greater labour-market access without creating the SWP Consequently, the SWP may have reduced PICs’ incentive to pressure the Australian government to realise the labour-mobility goals of the APTC.
Unlike the SWP, the APTC emerged as a unilateral Australian initiative with no expressed demand from Pacific governments for its mobility component; Pacific governments have largely embraced the program for skill training but not for international mobility Developing country governments generally prefer unskilled migration to skilled, and the Pacific mirrors that inclination Persistent shortages of skilled and semi-skilled workers remain a challenge in the region, and business interests warn about brain drain In its submission to a 2010 Australian Senate Inquiry, the Australia Pacific Islands Business Council warned about the flight of what it called “intellectual capital.”
This is a significant impediment to the long-term economic, political, and social development of these economies Australia is a willing partner in addressing this capital outflow, and we believe that decisive steps must be taken to curb the flow.
Lessons for future Global Skill Partnerships
Although the APTC successfully built skills development and training infrastructure in Pacific Island Countries, it fell short of its goal to boost international labour mobility for graduates The program’s design features substantially constrained cross-border mobility, and no remedial action has been implemented Consequently, the APTC provides several lessons for future initiatives that seek to connect skills creation with skill mobility, emphasizing the need for design choices that actively promote mobility and measurable outcomes.
Funding skill acquisition to promote skilled labour mobility is a new public policy objective for donors and may provoke opposition from receiving-country trade unions as well as sending-country employer groups and governments Overcoming this opposition and achieving the goal of skilled labour mobility requires political commitment from both sending and receiving countries, supported by broad, ongoing consultations From the outset, destination- and origin-country business councils and labour organizations must be directly involved to align interests and build consensus.
Measures to expand the skilled labour supply should aim to maximize economic welfare and build political support in sending countries, while ensuring that linking skill creation with skill mobility does not cause skill depletion In contexts with shortages of skilled and semi-skilled labour, providing additional training to already-skilled workers may be ineffective Therefore, project design must enable a supply-side response to the stronger incentives for skill acquisition created by international mobility, such as by targeting school leavers rather than experienced workers to expand the pipeline of skills.
Although APTC certificates and diplomas are recognized in Australia, graduates still face substantial barriers in having their skills and work experience recognized for employment-based visas A mechanism for formal recognition could be designed into the program, supported by a financing framework—public funds, employer contributions, or graduate loans—to offset the exorbitant costs of skills assessments that are high by international migrant-origin standards Without such support, the potential of the APTC to translate training into visa-ready qualifications remains limited.
This barrier has been recognized, but there is currently no mechanism to address it A practical approach would be to conduct Australian skill assessments within the campus countries, with Australian RTO representatives traveling there annually to perform the assessments.
Effective employer linkages are essential to a program that connects skill creation with skill mobility, requiring strong ties to employers through proactive APTC recruitment within Australia, international job fairs in origin countries, and short-term Australian work visas that enable APTC graduates to undertake brief internships The APTC has partly acknowledged that limited promotion of these linkages creates a barrier to graduate movement, but such efforts remain very limited In Canberra, the APTC is generally seen as emerging from the Prime Minister’s Office rather than from active demand by Australian employers seeking skilled workers from the Pacific region.
Interministerial coordination for APTC graduates was weak from the start Our discussions in Canberra showed little joint planning for moving APTC graduates between AusAID and the Department of Immigration We could not locate any earlier assessment of the immigration requirements for APTC graduates, unlike the analysis described in the previous section Such an exercise would have required cross-ministry cooperation to form a plan capable of delivering the higher immigration rates envisioned at the opening of the APTC, and that interministerial effort would need to be formally institutionalized and operationalized.
Access to Australian employment remains restricted for certain trades due to national and state registration requirements Therefore, the APTC should continue to explore partnerships with Australian industry bodies—such as the Master Plumbers Association and the Electrical Contractors Association—and with industry interlocutors like the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry to assess viability and, where appropriate, secure sponsorship for in‑Australia workplace training that supports meeting Australian registration requirements.
16 “Whilst the APTC is not responsible for employment services, it will encourage regional and international employers to consider the employment of APTC graduates” (AUSAID 2010a, p 22)
Expatriate staff costs on island campuses have pushed the cost of training each APTC graduate to resemble the expense of sending the trainee to Australia for training The per-student cost at the APTC is substantially higher than training in local facilities, suggesting that even a partial shift toward local staffing could largely or entirely finance the costs of skill recognition and visa acquisition described in Table.
4 without adding to the overall budget The APTC is in fact now engaged in training local staff that could replace expatriate educators in the future
APTC began as an innovative international program to link skill creation with skill mobility, aiming to build skills in Pacific Island states and to foster regional mobility of skilled and semi-skilled labor, including flows to Australia It has achieved large-scale skill creation but has fallen short of delivering substantial international labor mobility.
Annex G shows that the average annual cost per APTC student in 2009 was AUD 14,669, a figure that sits within the typical Australia-based delivery cost per place of AUD 10,000–15,000, especially when accounting for the higher overheads of running a multi-country South Pacific campus with travel and professional expenses The project’s training cost is about AUD 34,600 per graduate, roughly equivalent to the cost of funding a scholarship to study an equivalent course in Australia.
Nair (2010) compares the cost of APTC training in Fiji with Fiji National University, noting that the cost of training each of the 3,000 APTC students is about FD$97,666 (293 million ÷ 3,000); by contrast, a single FNU Automotive student pays about FD$2,093 (Regional Student = FD$9,174) for the 2-year Trade Certificate Program, which is less than 10% of the APTC cost, and a Diploma in Automotive student completing a 2-year program at FNU would pay about FD$3,673 (Regional = FD$16,567); additionally, accommodation and meals at any FNU hostel run FD$20 per day or FD$140 per week.
FNU charges FD$4,480 per year, totaling FD$8,960 for the two‑year program, and a Trade Certificate student would pay about FD$18,134 while a Diploma student would pay about FD$25,527 for the full program, including boarding and meals—roughly 19% and 26% of the six‑month cost of training a single APTC student On a like‑for‑like basis, funding one APTC student would cover about five Trade Certificate students or four Diploma students at FNU With a budget of A$150 million, FNU could have trained at least 12,000 Diploma students or 20,000 Trade Certificate students from the region (around four times as many locals) under that funding Nair’s figures include housing and meals, which APTC also covers, but they do not reflect public subsidies to FNU’s operating costs; in 2013 FNU was set to receive about FD$24 million in government operating grants and transfers (roughly FD$1,200 per enrolled student for 20,000 students) Adding this subsidy would not alter the conclusion that FNU’s per‑student cost is well under a third of APTC’s APTC costs also include trainer training, whereas the FNU calculation here omits it; even with plausible trainer ratios, the conclusion remains that APTC training is far more expensive than FNU training.
Our findings indicate that the principal constraint on international migration for APTC graduates is the opportunity to migrate, not the desire to migrate The most significant limit to migration opportunities is the lack of a streamlined, affordable pathway for APTC graduates to have their skills and work experience assessed and certified.
Australian trades and graduate mobility in the Pacific are constrained by the absence of effective mechanisms that allow graduates to connect with potential Australian employers, and for employers to learn about prospective candidates Our analysis shows that the principal reason these adverse design features persist is a lack of political commitment—both from the Australian government and from Pacific island governments—to the original labour mobility goal of the APTC.