Your College Closed — What Happens to Your Student Visa

What happens to your CoE when your provider defaults

Your CoE for the defaulted course is cancelled. This is a separate event from your visa being cancelled — the two are not the same thing — but it removes the enrolment basis your student visa was granted on, which matters for the reason covered further down.

The 14-day clock — what your provider is required to do

Within 14 days of the default, your provider must either: offer you a place in a suitable alternative course at no extra cost, which you accept in writing, or arrange a refund of your unspent tuition fees. This is a genuine obligation on the provider under the Tuition Protection Service framework, not a courtesy.

If your provider can't or won't meet that obligation — TPS steps in

If the provider fails to make a suitable offer, the Tuition Protection Service itself takes over: it helps you find an alternative course with a different provider, or, as the fallback, refunds your unspent tuition fees directly. You manage this through TPS Online, the case-management system used once a default is confirmed.

Refund timing — what's solid and what isn't

The 14-day window to receive an alternative-course-or-refund offer is well established and confirmed directly on the TPS's own materials. The separate question of how quickly an actual refund payment must land afterward is less clearly documented — one regulator source describes a roughly 4-week "provider obligation period" for the underlying refund obligation, but we could not independently confirm that exact figure against the legislation itself. Treat the 14-day offer window as solid; treat the follow-on payment timing as commonly reported rather than confirmed.

The part that actually threatens your visa: the enrolment gap

Condition 8202 requires you to remain enrolled in a registered course. Once your defaulted CoE is gone and 14 days pass with no alternative course accepted and no new CoE in place, you are, in a real sense, not enrolled, and that starts the same compliance clock as any other 8202 breach, covered below. This is the actual mechanism connecting a college closure to your visa, not the lost tuition money, which the TPS system is designed to insure.

Finding your own new provider — the six-month transfer rule doesn't block you here

Overseas students generally can't transfer to a different provider before completing six calendar months of their principal course, unless they have a letter of release or fall within a recognised exception. A provider ceasing to be registered, exactly what's happened here, is one of those recognised exceptions. If you'd rather find your own new course and provider independently, rather than wait on the provider or TPS to arrange one, the six-month rule is not the obstacle in this specific situation.

If nothing happens in time — how the compliance clock actually works

If you end up with no valid enrolment and no action taken, your provider, or a subsequent one, if you don't maintain enrolment there either, would need to consider whether to report you for a visa condition breach under the National Code, a process that involves written notice and an internal appeal window before any report can proceed. If a report reaches the Department, a formal notice process follows with a stated response window, commonly around 28 days, though the specific period stated on any notice you receive is what actually governs. Missing that window can lead to visa cancellation. This is the downstream risk that makes acting inside the 14-day TPS window worth prioritising, rather than a reason to panic about an inevitable cancellation — most students who accept an alternative course or arrange a new CoE promptly never get anywhere near this stage.

What this means for a partner or children included on your visa

If you have a partner or dependent children on your student visa as subsequent entrants, their visas are generally tied to yours — if your visa were ever cancelled, theirs would be too. This is a reason to treat the enrolment gap seriously even if you personally feel unbothered by the disruption of the college closure itself.

When an agent genuinely helps

Speed is the value here more than legal complexity. An education agent, for the course-finding piece, or a migration agent, for making sure the compliance timeline is being managed correctly, can move quickly to get a new CoE in place inside the practical window before an enrolment gap becomes a visa-condition question. This is one of the scenarios in this cluster where acting fast matters more than technical argument.

What to do right now

1. Check whether your provider (or TPS, if the provider can't help) has made a formal alternative-course or refund offer, and note the date of the default.
2. If a suitable alternative course is offered, weigh accepting it against finding your own — remember the six-month transfer rule doesn't block you in this situation.
3. Get a new CoE in place as promptly as you reasonably can — this is what actually protects your visa status, separate from the refund process.
4. If time is passing and nothing has been resolved, get advice before an enrolment gap turns into a compliance notice.

My college just closed down — is my visa cancelled?

Not automatically. The CoE for your defaulted course is cancelled, but your visa itself isn't cancelled by the provider default event. The risk is the enrolment gap that follows if you don't get into a new course reasonably promptly — that's what can eventually lead to a compliance process.

How long does my provider have to help me?

Within 14 days of the default, your provider must either offer you a suitable alternative course at no extra cost or arrange a refund of your unspent tuition. If they can't do either, the Tuition Protection Service (TPS) steps in to help you find an alternative or refund you directly.

Will I get my tuition fees back?

The Tuition Protection Service framework is built to insure your unspent tuition fees specifically for this scenario, either through the provider's own refund obligation or through the TPS itself if the provider can't pay. The exact timing of a refund payment isn't as clearly documented as the 14-day offer window, so treat published timeframes as indicative rather than guaranteed.

Can I find my own new college instead of the one TPS offers?

Yes. Normally overseas students can't transfer providers before six months into their course without a letter of release, but a provider ceasing to be registered, which is what a default means, is one of the recognised exceptions to that rule.

What happens if I don't sort out a new enrolment quickly?

Once your CoE is gone and time passes with no new enrolment, you risk breaching Condition 8202 (the requirement to remain enrolled), which can eventually lead to a formal compliance and cancellation process. Acting inside the provider's or TPS's response window is the best way to avoid ever reaching that stage.