BAIRD review proposals to tighten regulation of the overseas student industry have been welcomed but questions remain over enforcement.

University of Melbourne skilled-migration expert Lesleyanne Hawthorne said the proposals would go a long way towards weeding out shonky providers and restoring confidence to the sector. But she warned that the effectiveness of the recommendations would depend on whether sufficient resources were put into enforcement.

"Will there be a capacity aligned to this that will give teeth to the regulators?" Professor Hawthorne told the HES.

She said lack of enforcement had been a key reason shonky providers had been allowed to emerge in the first place.

State regulators have been particularly criticised for not putting enough resources into monitoring the soaring number of private providers. The Baird review points out that the federal compliance section covering the 1327 registered providers had only 10 staff.

Professor Hawthorne said the sector needed to know what resources would be put into monitoring providers and who would have the power to deregister providers; this has traditionally been a preserve of the states.

Meanwhile, for the first time thousands of private college owners and managers face a fit-and-proper-person test to re-register their businesses, but significant loopholes remain, according to a governance expert.

RMIT University principal policy adviser and lawyer Gavin Moodie described the Rudd government's new re-registration of providers law as "a substantial advance".

However, he added that "maintenance of the standards depended upon state monitoring".

Similarly, although the new re-registration law has been created federally, prime responsibility for carrying out the fit-and-proper-person test will rest with the states and territories, the federal government has confirmed.

Under the latest federal changes, the onus of proving college operators are fit and proper persons has shifted from self-identification to a state responsibility.

In Victoria, all but the lowest-risk providers will be required to complete a statutory declaration against the federal and state fit-and-proper-person criteria, the state's regulator Lynn Glover said.

In NSW, an education department spokesman said the federal law brought "the other states into line with what is the rigorous and already well-established practice" for registration in the state.

Dr Moodie said a key aspect of the fit-and-proper-person test was subjective and offered considerable scope for litigation.

"These fit-and-proper person tests are heavily litigated, so any authority applying the test has to do it very carefully. They are going to have to put on a lot of staff."

However, Victoria, NSW and Queensland said the extra checks on providers' bona fides would be carried out with the existing resources.

On the potential of the Baird reforms, Professor Hawthorne said the key was to break the "cycle of self interest" that extended beyond profit-driven colleges to students seeking the easiest route to permanent residency and state governments keen to build a lucrative international student industry.

In a controversial recommendation, the Baird review calls for the creation of a single tuition protection service to replace the various private industry run assurance schemes.

Mr Baird believed this should include the public sector universities and TAFEs, in order to boost the capacity of the sector as a whole and to place displaced students when colleges collapse. But the public sector does not want to pay a levy for a scheme aimed at covering the risk posed by private providers.

"It is sensible that the cost of this scheme is proposed to be risk-based, but as public TAFE institutes represent no risk to international students, they shouldn't have to subsidise the operations of private colleges," TAFE Directors Australia's acting chief executive Pam Caven said.

The Australian Council of Private Education and Training that runs the largest assurance scheme is wary of a single scheme.