CRICOS, CoE and Your Australian Offer Letter for Indian Students

An Australian college can be registered on CRICOS while the course an agent sold you is not. That is not a technicality. Under the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000, registration attaches to a particular course at a particular location, and merely making an offer for a course that is not registered at that location is an offence carrying two years in prison. The check that catches it takes under a minute, and almost nobody runs it before paying a deposit.

This page walks the paperwork chain that has to happen before an Australian student visa is even possible, in the order it actually happens. CRICOS registration, then the offer letter, then the written agreement you sign, then the deposit, then the Confirmation of Enrolment that Home Affairs really wants. It also covers the two things that cost Indian families the most money, which are getting the main CoE wrong on a package and not knowing what the law says a provider must return when a visa is refused.

What is the real order from a CRICOS course to a visa lodgement?

Almost every expensive mistake here is an ordering mistake. People pay before they check, or accept an offer before they understand which course will govern their visa. The sequence below is fixed by law and by the way Home Affairs assesses a file, and each step depends on the one above it.

1. The course is registered on CRICOS at the campus you will actually attend. You verify this yourself, before you engage with anybody.
2. You apply and the provider issues a letter of offer, normally conditional on marks, English scores or documents.
3. You meet the conditions and the offer becomes unconditional.
4. You accept in writing, which forms the written agreement. This must be signed or otherwise accepted before or at the same moment the provider takes any money from you.
5. You pay the deposit, within the statutory limit on how much can be collected before the course starts.
6. The provider issues your CoE electronically through PRISMS, the Commonwealth enrolment system.
7. You lodge the Subclass 500 with every CoE code in the form. Without a CoE the application is not weak, it is invalid.
8. Your main CoE sets your processing priority and decides which financial and English evidence you must supply.

Notice what is missing from step seven. Home Affairs never asks for your offer letter. The words do not appear anywhere on its Subclass 500 Student visa page. The offer is a contract between you and the provider. The CoE is the document the Commonwealth reads.

What is CRICOS, and what does a CRICOS code actually tell you?

CRICOS stands for the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students. It is kept by the Secretary of the Department of Education under section 14A of the ESOS Act, and it is the only list that legally matters. The Act requires it to record the name of every registered provider, the name of every course that provider may deliver, every location at which each course may be delivered, a unique identifier for the provider, a separate unique identifier for each course at each location, the registration period and any conditions imposed.

Read that list again, because it contains the answer most Indian applicants never think to ask for. There are two codes, not one. A CRICOS provider code identifies the institution and is always five digits and a letter, as in 00098G for UNSW, 00008C for Monash and 00122A for RMIT. A CRICOS course code identifies one course at one location and belongs to that course alone.

Here is the part that catches people. Section 8 of the ESOS Act makes it an offence to provide a course, to make an offer of a course, to invite a student to apply for one, or to hold yourself out as able to provide it, where the person is not registered for that particular course at that particular location. Registration is granted course by course under section 10J, and it can be suspended or cancelled for one course while the rest of the institution carries on. So a provider code proves nothing about the course you were sold. In the Department of Education’s own register export dated 1 July 2026 there are 1,545 registered providers and 26,517 currently registered courses, but only 147 of those providers have a single coursework master’s degree registered, and only 172 have a bachelor degree. The rest are vocational, English language and school providers.

Counted by Nbyula from the Department of Education’s CRICOS provider, course and location export published on data.gov.au, snapshot dated 1 July 2026.

How do you check your own provider and course on the CRICOS register?

The register is public and free at cricos.education.gov.au, and it has two doors. Institution Search answers whether a college exists and what it is allowed to teach. Course Search answers the question that actually protects you.

Do it in this order and it takes about a minute.

• Search the course code, not the college. Open Course Search, put the CRICOS course code from your offer letter into the CRICOS Course Code field, and search. If nothing comes back, stop and ask the provider for the correct code in writing.
• Match the campus. A course is registered at named locations. Of the currently registered courses, 16,593 are registered at exactly one location. If your offer says Sydney and the register lists only the Melbourne campus, that offer is not valid for Sydney.
• Match the duration. The register publishes the registered duration in weeks. Your CoE is not allowed to exceed it.
• Match the fee. The register publishes the provider’s own declared tuition fee for the whole course, not per year, plus non-tuition fees and an estimated total. A wide gap between that figure and your offer letter is a question worth asking before you pay.
• Check the expired flag. Eighty seven courses on the July 2026 snapshot were listed with an expired registration. Existing on CRICOS and being currently registered are different things.

Two practical warnings. First, do not use the shape of the code as a test. Most course codes are six digits and a letter, but 985 of the currently registered ones are seven digits with no letter at all, including several Macquarie University master’s degrees. Second, the institution page shows a field called total capacity across all the provider’s locations, which is the maximum number of international students that provider is permitted to enrol. It does not show sanctions or conditions, so a clean CRICOS listing is proof of registration and nothing more. If you want the shortlist itself done properly, that belongs on our guide to Australian universities and the Group of Eight.

What must your Australian offer letter and written agreement contain?

An Australian offer is regulated in a way an Indian admission letter is not. Standard 2 of the National Code of Practice 2018 says that before a provider accepts you it must give you comprehensive, current, plain English information covering entry requirements, the CRICOS course code, course content and modes of study, course duration and holiday breaks, campus locations, any arrangement under which another organisation delivers part of the course, indicative tuition and non-tuition fees with a warning about future fee changes, the cancellation and refund policy, and the grounds on which your enrolment could later be deferred, suspended or cancelled.

When you accept, that acceptance is a written agreement under section 47B of the ESOS Act and Standard 3, and it is the single most important document you will sign. Standard 3.1 requires it to be signed or otherwise accepted by you concurrently with or before the provider accepts any payment. A demand for a deposit before any agreement exists is therefore a breach you can point at, in writing, immediately.

Standard 3.3 sets out what the agreement must state. The course and its expected start date, the locations where it will be delivered, any conditions on your enrolment, every tuition fee and the period it relates to, and every non-tuition fee you might incur, including reassessment, deferral and late payment fees. Standard 3.4 then requires the refund terms, how to claim a refund, who other than you may receive one, a plain English explanation of what happens if the course is not delivered including the role of the Tuition Protection Service, and a line confirming that none of this affects your rights under Australian Consumer Law. The amounts that may or may not be repaid must expressly include fees collected by education agents on the provider’s behalf.

Providers also carry duties over the agents who represent them. Standard 4 requires a written agreement with every agent, the agent’s details recorded in PRISMS, and that the agent act honestly and in the best interests of the student. A provider must not accept students from an agent it knows or reasonably suspects to be giving migration advice without authorisation under the Migration Act, or using PRISMS to create CoEs for students who are not genuine. Since 20 January 2026 a provider is also barred from paying an agent commission for recruiting a student who has already commenced with another provider, outside a few defined cases.

How much money can a provider take before your course starts?

Section 27 of the ESOS Act is short and useful. A registered provider must not receive more than 50 per cent of your total tuition fees for a course before you have begun that course. There are only two exceptions. You, or whoever is paying for you, may choose to pay more. Or the course runs 25 weeks or less, in which case the cap does not apply at all.

The word choose is doing real work there. If the provider requires more than half up front for a two year master’s, that is not the exception, that is a breach. Ask for the demand in writing before you argue.

What happens to that money is regulated too. Under sections 28 and 29, any tuition fee received before you begin must be paid within five business days into an account with an Australian bank, and the balance of that account must at all times be enough to repay every student who has paid but not yet started. The Act calls that the protected amount, and the provider may only dip below it to pay a refund, to pay an alternative provider taking over your course, or to pay the Tuition Protection Service. Your deposit is not the college’s working capital until you sit in the classroom.

For what the whole exercise costs once fees, health cover and living expenses are added up, see our page on the cost of studying and living in Australia.

What is a Confirmation of Enrolment, and how do you read one?

The National Code defines a Confirmation of Enrolment as a document, provided electronically, issued by the registered provider to an intending overseas student, which must accompany the student visa application and which confirms your eligibility to enrol in that particular course with that provider. It is generated in PRISMS, the Provider Registration and International Student Management System. It is not a PDF an agent can produce.

Read it against three other documents rather than on its own. Against the CRICOS register, against your written agreement, and against your passport.

• Provider name and CRICOS provider code. This is the identity that will set your visa processing tier, so it must be the institution you actually chose.
• Course name and CRICOS course code. Both must match the register entry you checked, and the location must match too.
• Start date and expected duration. Standard 8 says the expected duration on your CoE must not exceed the CRICOS registered duration. If you were granted credit or recognition of prior learning that shortens the course, Standard 2 requires the CoE to be issued only for that reduced duration, which shortens your visa period as well.
• Tuition figures. These should match the fees listed in your written agreement, including what you have already paid.
• OSHC dates. Home Affairs states that where the provider arranges your cover, it must include your health insurance information on the CoE. If two providers each arrange cover for a package, the second policy must begin the day the first expires, with no gap.
• Your personal details. Spelling and date of birth exactly as they appear in your passport.

Two hard rules from Home Affairs. You must provide a CoE for all intended courses when you apply, and if you do not provide one at the time of lodgement the application is invalid. And your CoE must still be valid when the decision is made, not merely when you lodge, because a CoE stops being valid if it is cancelled or the course is completed. If your provider changes anything about the identity or duration of your course, section 19 of the ESOS Act requires that change to be entered in PRISMS, and you may need a fresh CoE in your ImmiAccount.

Which CoE is your main one, and why does it set your visa queue?

If you hold a package, an English course followed by a diploma followed by a degree, you will hold more than one CoE, and one of them is treated as the main one. Home Affairs states plainly that where you apply for a package of courses with different providers, the visa priority is based on the main Confirmation of Enrolment, and that this is usually the final course in the package. The National Code says the same thing in different words, defining the principal course of study as the main course, normally the final one, where a visa covers multiple courses.

That single determination does three separate jobs. It decides which financial capacity and English language evidence Home Affairs asks you for. It decides which provider you must complete six months with before you are free to transfer, under Standard 7 of the National Code. And since 14 November 2025 it decides your position in the queue, because Ministerial Direction 115 sorts offshore Subclass 500 applications into three priority tiers according to how far the provider named on your main CoE has progressed through its annual allocation of new overseas student commencements.

The practical consequence is uncomfortable and worth saying out loud. Two identical applicants with identical documents can sit in different queues purely because of which final course they accepted, and the difference between the tiers is a matter of weeks before anyone opens the file. Home Affairs also says you should note your provider’s status on the day you lodge, because that is the day the tier is fixed, and that applications lodged between 15 November and 31 December are judged against the following year’s allocation. The full mechanism, the thresholds, the per university allocation figures and how to look up your own provider’s current status are on our page about Australia student visa processing time and priority tiers. Before you accept a package, work out which CoE will be your main one, then check that provider.

What happens to your deposit if your student visa is refused?

This is where money is quietly lost, and the law is far more generous than most refund policies suggest. A visa refusal reaches the refund rules as a student default under section 47A of the ESOS Act. Section 47D then says something counterintuitive. Where you were refused a visa and that refusal caused you not to start, the provider is not required to refund under your written agreement at all. Section 47E and a Commonwealth instrument take over instead, and they are stricter than most agreements.

The instrument is the Education Services for Overseas Students (Calculation of Refund) Instrument 2024, which repealed the 2014 specification that many third party pages still quote. Its section 10 is the one to know.

Three details matter. Course fees in that first row means tuition fees plus any non-tuition fees the provider received, so the AUD 500 ceiling is measured against everything, not just tuition. The refund must be paid within four weeks of the default day, and not, as in the ordinary written agreement case, within four weeks of you making a written claim. And the cap binds the provider only. Money you paid an education agent as its own service fee, which the provider never received, sits outside the ESOS Act and is governed by whatever you signed with that agent, which is one more reason to keep every receipt.

What does the Tuition Protection Service actually protect?

The Tuition Protection Service is the Commonwealth backstop, and it is widely misunderstood as insurance against your own visa being refused. Its main job is the opposite. It exists for provider default, which section 46A of the ESOS Act defines as the provider failing to start your course on the agreed day, or the course ceasing before you complete it.

When that happens the clock is short. The provider must notify the Department and the TPS Director within three business days. Within 14 days of the default it must either place you in an alternative course at its own expense or refund your unspent tuition fees. If it fails, or is unlikely to manage it, the TPS Director must write to you with options for suitable alternative courses, and you then have 30 days to accept a place. Money comes out of the Overseas Students Tuition Fund, after which your claim moves from the provider to the Commonwealth, and the provider owes that amount back as a debt recoverable in court.

The part almost nobody writes down is section 50A. A call is also made on the fund where a student defaults and the provider fails to pay the refund it owes. In plain terms, if your visa was refused and the college simply will not return your deposit, the TPS is the escalation route, not just a small claims problem. There is a hard limit though. No call can be made on the fund if the TPS Director becomes aware of the circumstances more than 12 months after the default day, so do not let a stalled refund drift for a year.

One last sequencing point. If your provider defaults after you have already lodged your visa application, Home Affairs requires a new CoE from a new provider before your file can proceed. The document list and the Genuine Student requirement for that application are covered on our Australia student visa Subclass 500 page.

Sources

• Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000, Compilation No. 45, compilation date 5 December 2025 (registration per course at each location under sections 7B and 8, course additions under section 10J, the Register and its contents under sections 14A and 14B, ESOS agencies under section 6C, PRISMS reporting under section 19, the 50 per cent limit and protected account under sections 27 to 29, defaults and refunds under sections 46A to 50E)
• National Code of Practice for Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students 2018, Compilation No. 1, compilation date 21 January 2026 (Standard 2 pre-enrolment information and CoE duration after credit, Standard 3 written agreements, Standard 4 education agents, Standard 7 transfers, Standard 8 CoE duration against CRICOS duration, and the definitions of CoE, CRICOS, PRISMS and principal course of study)
• National Code of Practice Amendment (Education Agent Commissions) Instrument 2026, made 16 January 2026 (the ban on commissions for recruiting students already studying with another provider)
• Education Services for Overseas Students (Calculation of Refund) Instrument 2024 and its Explanatory Statement (section 10 visa refusal refunds, the 5 per cent or AUD 500 ceiling, weekly tuition fee and weeks in default period, and the repeal of the 2014 specification)
• Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students (Course Search and Institution Search, the CRICOS Course Code field, and the institution details fields including total capacity across all locations)
• Department of Education, CRICOS provider, course and location export, snapshot as at 1 July 2026, with the Department’s own field definitions (provider and course counts, expired flag, registered duration in weeks, tuition fee, institution capacity)
• Department of Home Affairs, Student visa Subclass 500 (CoE required for all intended courses, invalid application without a CoE at lodgement, validity at decision, packaged course CoE codes and the two month gap rule, OSHC details on the CoE, new CoE required after a provider default)
• Department of Home Affairs, Student visa processing priorities (visa priority set by the main CoE, usually the final course in the package, status fixed on the day of lodgement, and the 15 November to 31 December rule)
• Department of Home Affairs, Document Checklist Tool (takes country of passport plus the education provider or its CRICOS code)
• Department of Education, Tuition Protection Service, International Students (provider default and student default obligations, the 14 day and four week deadlines, and TPS assistance after an unpaid student default refund)

Related reading. Get the full picture in our guide to studying in Australia, pick where to apply with our list of Australian universities and the Group of Eight, then work through the Subclass 500 document list and Genuine Student requirement and check the visa processing time and priority tier your provider puts you in.