The Australian study requirement for a Temporary Graduate visa (subclass 485) is two tests, and you have to pass both. Your qualification has to be worth at least 92 weeks of CRICOS-registered course duration, and you have to have spent at least 16 calendar months studying it in Australia. Credit transfer and recognition of prior learning (RPL) are where the hard cases sit. How credit affects your 92 weeks is contested. Home Affairs treats credit as cutting your weeks. The Tribunal decisions on the point have counted the registered duration of the courses instead.
92 weeks means registered duration, not elapsed time. Home Affairs: take 92 weeks to finish a course registered for 78 weeks and "you will only receive credit for 78 weeks"
16 calendar months runs from when your course started (the start of lectures, not orientation) to the date you met all your academic requirements
Both, not either. The regulation joins the two tests with the word "and"
Credit from another CRICOS-registered Australian course counts toward both numbers. Credit for overseas study, or for Australian study that was not CRICOS-registered, counts toward neither
How credit is counted is contested. Home Affairs spreads the registered weeks across the units, so 16 of 24 units on a 138-week course is 92 weeks. The Tribunal has counted the registered duration of the courses completed instead, and overturned refusals decided the other way
Credit can leave your weeks fine and your months short. Nobody disputes that one, and it is the trap
Falling short is not the end. Home Affairs publishes three fixes: cancel the credits and do the subjects, add extra award units, or add a further qualification with enough registered duration
Most people who look this up have already done the arithmetic. They have a masters registered for 104 weeks, credit for two subjects, a number that lands within a week of 92, and no way to work out which side of the line they are on.
The rules are published, and the Department of Home Affairs explains them well on a page dedicated to this one criterion. Nobody applies them to your course, your credits and your dates.
What is the Australian study requirement for a 485 visa?
It is the rule that decides whether your degree is long enough to support a Temporary Graduate visa, and it has two parts. Your qualification (or qualifications) must be worth at least two academic years of CRICOS-registered study, which is 92 weeks. And the study must have taken you at least 16 calendar months, in Australia, on a visa that let you study. Those two numbers are the whole rule.
Home Affairs sets out the same two tests on its study requirement page, and adds the timing that goes with them. One eligible qualification worth two academic years will do it, or several qualifications adding up to that total. The study has to have been completed in the six months before the application is made.
Three conditions apply before you count anything. The course has to be registered on CRICOS (the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students), taught in English, and done in Australia on a visa that authorised study. English language courses and enabling or foundation programs never count.
Does 92 weeks mean how long my course took, or how long it is registered for?
The 92 weeks is the duration CRICOS records for your course, not the time you personally spent on it. Home Affairs, with a worked example:
"Two academic years study, or 92 weeks of registered study, is based on the duration of the course as registered by CRICOS. You can take longer to complete your course, but you will only be credited with the number of weeks that CRICOS determines as the standard duration. For example, if you take 92 weeks to successfully complete a course that CRICOS says should take 78 weeks, you will only receive credit for 78 weeks."
This is the rule most people get wrong in their own favour. Two full years of your life on a course registered for 78 weeks is 78 weeks for visa purposes. Repeating a year does not add weeks, and neither does a leave of absence or an extra semester to clear a failed subject.
The number comes from the definition of an academic year, set by a legislative instrument: "at least a total of 46 weeks, being the duration of a course or courses". Two academic years is 92 weeks. Three is 138.
It cuts the other way too. Finish a 92-week course in 78 weeks because you overloaded, and you are still credited with 92 weeks. Speed costs you nothing on this test. It can cost you on the other one.
Your course's registered duration is a public fact. Look it up by course code on the CRICOS register before you count anything else.
What is the 16 month rule, and when does the clock start?
The 16 calendar months run from the day your course started, meaning the start of lectures rather than orientation week, to the date you met all your academic requirements. That is Home Affairs' own measurement, and it is a floor rather than a target. Nothing meets the study requirement in less than 16 calendar months.
Calendar months, not full-time equivalent months, and not a headcount of teaching weeks. A summer break inside the period does not carve time out of it.
The end point is your course completion date: the day your institution recorded that you had met every academic requirement. Not your graduation, and not the date your award was conferred. That same date starts the six-month window for applying, so pin it down once and it settles two questions. Our guide to the 485 completion date covers how to read a completion letter carrying four different dates.
The study also has to have happened while you were physically in Australia, on a visa that authorised you to study.
Do I have to meet both tests, or is one enough?
Both tests apply. They are cumulative, and the regulation joins them with the word "and":
(1B) The applicant, in the period of 6 months immediately before the day the application was made, completed one or more degrees for award by Australian educational institutions as a result of a course or courses:
(a) that are registered courses; and
(b) that were completed in a total of at least 16 calendar months; and
(c) that were completed as a result of a total of at least 2 academic years study; and
(d) for which all instruction was conducted in English; and
(e) that the applicant undertook while in Australia as the holder of a visa authorising the applicant to study.
That is clause 485.231(1B) of the Migration Regulations, the criterion for the Post-Higher Education Work stream. Every limb has to be met. There are two common ways to fail one test while passing the other.
You finished fast. Your masters is registered for 92 weeks, you overloaded and finished in 14 months. Weeks: fine. Months: 14, and the floor is 16. Refused.
You took your time on a short course. Your course is registered for 78 weeks and you spent two and a half years on it. Months: fine. Weeks: 78, and the floor is 92. Refused.
Both are failures of a criterion, so a case officer has no discretion to exercise, and the AUD $5,750 government charge is not refunded.
Does credit transfer or RPL affect my 485 study requirement?
Yes, and how much is the one part of this requirement that is genuinely contested. Credit transfer and recognition of prior learning (RPL, credit for earlier study or work experience) both cut the number of units you have to complete. Your university may call units subjects, courses or papers. Whether cutting your units also cuts your counted weeks is a question the regulation, the Department and the Tribunal do not answer the same way.
What the regulation says. The 92 weeks attaches to the course, not to how much of it you personally sat. Clause 485.231(1B) asks whether your degrees were "completed as a result of a total of at least 2 academic years study", and an academic year is defined as "at least a total of 46 weeks, being the duration of a course or courses" as registered. Those words measure the course. They say nothing about credit.
How the Department reads it. Home Affairs treats credit as reducing the study you did, and so the weeks you get counted. Its guidance says credit "may reduce the amount of study undertaken", and it shows the method with an example. Take a course registered for 138 weeks, or three years, with 24 units of equal weight. Completing 16 of those units gets you to two academic years, so credit for up to 8 units still leaves you meeting the requirement. In plain arithmetic: 138 weeks across 24 units is 5.75 weeks per unit, and 16 units at 5.75 weeks is 92. This is the method a case officer is most likely to apply to your file.
One caveat on that method. It assumes units of equal weight. If your subjects carry different credit point values, and most do, work the proportion out in credit points rather than by counting subjects.
What the Tribunal has done with it. Refusals decided on the Department's method have been overturned on review. In those decisions the question asked was whether the courses the applicant completed were registered for at least 92 weeks in total. Credit and recognition of prior learning were treated as the education provider's business rather than the Department's arithmetic. The two decisions below show how that plays out.
Two masters degrees registered for 78 weeks each, studied at the same time with mostly the same subjects, and the refusal was overturned.
Forty units were credited from a 78-week masters into a 104-week masters, the Tribunal counted the full 104 weeks, and the refusal was overturned.
Both decisions were made before 14 December 2024, when this criterion was renumbered. The words that matter carried across unchanged, but no decision has yet been made under the current clause.
The same facts, two answers
Run the Department's method on the case people most often bring. A coursework masters registered for 104 weeks with 16 units is 6.5 weeks per unit. Credit for two units leaves you completing 14, which is 91 weeks. One week short, and refused. Credit for one unit leaves you at 15 units, or 97.5 weeks, and comfortably over.
On the reading the two decisions above take, the same person is not short at all. She completed a course registered for 104 weeks, and 104 is more than 92.
That gap matters if you are sitting in it. A case officer will most likely apply the Department's method. The AUD $5,750 charge is not refunded when the answer comes back no. And applicants refused on that method have won on review, though review at the Tribunal is a separate process with its own timeline and its own cost.
Review is not a fix for everything, either. Applicants have lost at the Tribunal on other parts of this same criterion, including qualifications that were not on the specified list and study that finished outside the six-month window.
This is the situation a checklist cannot settle. If your weeks land anywhere near 92 once credit is counted, book a consultation with Tern's immigration lawyer before an application is made.
Which credit counts, and which does not
The rule turns on where the credit came from.
Home Affairs states the exclusions directly:
"You cannot count the credited units towards meeting the Temporary Graduate visa study requirement if you: are already using them towards meeting the subclass 485 visa as part of another course; received the credit for study within Australia in a non-CRICOS registered course; received the credit for study completed overseas."
The permission in the first row matters as much as the exclusions. Credit from another CRICOS course counts even if you never finished that course and hold no qualification for it, and the time you spent earning it counts toward your 16 months. That settles a diploma that fed into a bachelor, a transfer between two masters programs, and a course you abandoned when you switched fields.
The trap: your weeks are fine, your months are short
Credit for overseas study adds nothing to your 16 months, but it does shorten the time you physically spend in Australia finishing the course. So you can hold a 104-week registered masters, sit well clear on weeks, and still fall under the floor because the credit compressed your enrolment to 15 months. Home Affairs says as much on its own page.
Check both numbers every time. Passing one tells you nothing about the other.
What can I do if I am short of 92 weeks or 16 months?
More than you would think. Home Affairs publishes three fixes of its own, so these are official routes rather than clever workarounds. In rough order of cost:
Cancel the credits and sit those subjects. The cleanest fix when the credit is what pushed you under. It costs a session and the tuition, and it puts the units back into your completed count.
Add extra units the provider accepts as award units. Electives count, as long as your transcript shows them contributing to the award rather than sitting outside it.
Add a further eligible qualification with enough registered duration to bring the combined total to 92 weeks.
All three have to happen before your application goes in, and all three take months. Which is the argument for doing this arithmetic in your second-last semester, not the week your results come out.
A course registered for 78 weeks does not end your 485. It means that qualification cannot carry the requirement on its own. Courses registered under 92 weeks are common, coursework masters especially, and the people holding them are not disqualified. They need a second qualification or extra units to reach the total.
Can I combine two qualifications to reach 92 weeks?
Yes. The requirement can be met by "more than 1 qualification that results in a total of at least 2 academic years study", in the Department's words. A bachelor plus a masters, two masters, a diploma feeding into a degree: what matters is the total, and that the last qualification you rely on finished inside your six-month window. Two rules apply.
Overlapping periods cannot be counted twice. If you studied two qualifications at the same time, the overlap is one period of study, not two. Home Affairs: "Where qualifications overlap, you cannot count the period of study more than once."
Credit carried from an earlier qualification into a later one counts, and so does the time you spent earning it. Where you rely only on the most recent qualification, any credit it granted you from the previous one counts toward the study requirement, and "the actual period of study within the previous qualification can also be used to meet the 16-month requirement".
That second rule resolves the packaged-course cases. A graduate certificate stopped being an eligible qualification in its own right on 14 December 2024. But if the credit from a CRICOS-registered graduate certificate flowed into your masters, that credit counts toward both tests, and the months you spent on it count toward your 16.
Four common myths about the 485 study requirement
All four are commonly believed, and all four contradict the Department's own position.
The rule changed on 14 December 2024, so anything written before that date can describe a study requirement that no longer applies. Plenty of advice still circulating predates it. Check the date on anything you are relying on.
What if part of my study happened outside Australia?
An exchange semester or a term at an overseas campus does not disqualify you, as long as at least 92 weeks and 16 months of the study happened in Australia in a CRICOS-registered course. The Department's position is that the pattern of study does not matter as long as the requirement is met, and it treats a six-semester bachelor with semesters one and five taken overseas as meeting it. The 16 months has to be time you were physically present in Australia.
Two situations fail outright: studying solely at an overseas campus of an Australian institution, and studying online or by correspondence with an Australian institution while you were outside Australia.
A semester abroad comes out of both counts. Take it out first, then check what remains against 92 and 16.
What your completion letter and transcript have to show
The study requirement is proved on paper: a certified copy of your provider's completion letter, and certified copies of your transcripts. The completion date guide lists the six things the letter itself has to show.
If you are relying on credit, the letter has to say so, and your transcript has to show how the credits contributed to your award, in the Department's words "leaving no doubt that the credits are part of the award of the qualification". That is the document most likely to be missing when it is needed, because plenty of transcripts list credited units without showing where the credit came from.
Tern Tip
Ask your provider for two things in writing, and ask now rather than after your results. First, the CRICOS-registered duration of your course in weeks, as it stood when you enrolled. Second, a credit statement naming every unit you were credited, the course each credit came from, and whether that course was CRICOS-registered. Both are routine requests while you are still a student and awkward ones after you graduate.
How Tern will handle the study requirement
Tern's Temporary Graduate service is not open yet, so this is what we are building rather than what we sell today. Most of the study requirement is arithmetic, and arithmetic should not be left to the applicant. The eligibility check reads your course's registered duration from the CRICOS register instead of asking you for a number almost nobody knows, then works out your weeks and your months from your units, credits and dates, and shows you where you stand before anyone pays anything. Where credit puts you close to the line, that is a question for the lawyer rather than the calculator, and we will say so. Applications are reviewed before submission, and complex credit cases get lawyer review.
If you want to know when it opens, you can join the waitlist for Tern's Temporary Graduate service.
Frequently asked questions
My course is CRICOS-registered for 104 weeks but I finished it in 15 months. Do I qualify?
Do failed subjects count toward the 92 weeks?
Does a graduate certificate count toward the 485 study requirement?
I transferred courses partway through my degree. How do I count that?
Does credit transfer reduce my 92 weeks?
What happens if I apply and the study requirement is not met?
Does the Department check my study requirement before I apply?
The arithmetic is knowable, and that is the point
You cannot change your course's registered duration, or take back a credit you accepted two years ago. You can find out exactly where you stand in an afternoon, with your transcript and your course code. Do that while there is still a semester left to fix something, and the biggest single risk in a 485 stops being one.
The other two 485 decisions that cannot be undone are the date you count your six months from and whether your family goes on the application: the completion date guide and adding a partner or children to a 485.
Tern's Temporary Graduate visa service is not open yet. Join the waitlist and we will tell you when it is.
