ACS 'closely related' major versus 'not closely related', occupation by occupation: the two words that are worth four years

ACS makes two separate findings about your degree, and people conflate them constantly. The first is how much ICT content it contains — reported as Major, Minor, or Insufficient. The second is whether that content is closely related to your nominated occupation. A degree can be a Major and still not be closely related to the occupation you nominated, and the consequences of each finding are different.

ACS’s own description of the sequence:

“ACS will review your qualification(s) to determine Australian Qualification Framework (AQF) comparability. The course units of your qualification are assessed to determine whether the professional IT content is considered an IT professional unit or not. The outcome of the Assessment will note if your qualification is a Major, Minor or if the IT content is Insufficient. An ACS Assessor will review which IT units are considered closely related to your nominated occupation. Once your qualification(s) have been assessed, the assessor will then determine the amount of relevant work experience required to meet the suitability criteria.”

Three steps: AQF level, then Major/Minor/Insufficient, then closely-related-to-occupation. Each one gates the next.

What the Major/Minor call is worth, in years

ACS publishes the arithmetic on its General Skills pathway page. This is the whole table, in ACS’s own terms.

Qualification level	Relevance to nominated occupation	Relevant IT work experience required
Bachelor’s or higher	Major in Data Science	2 years in the last 10, or 4 years anytime
Bachelor’s or higher	Major in ICT / Computer Science, Math, Statistics, Engineering	4 years anytime
Bachelor’s or higher	Minor in Data Science	5 years in the last 10, or 6 years anytime
Bachelor’s or higher	Minor in ICT / Computer Science, Math, Statistics, Engineering	6 years anytime
Diploma, advanced diploma or associate degree	Major in Data Science	5 years in the last 10, or 6 years anytime
Diploma, advanced diploma or associate degree	Major in ICT / Computer Science, Math, Statistics, Engineering	6 years anytime

Read the second and fourth rows together. Same bachelor’s degree, same nominated occupation, same person — four years if the assessor calls it a Major, six if a Minor. That is the single most valuable finding in an ACS outcome letter, and the criteria behind it are set out in what counts as an ICT major at ACS and quantified in how ACS deducts years by qualification level.

Three footnotes ACS attaches to that table, each of which changes something:

• “Relevant IT work experience must be professional IT employment and at least 20 hrs per week.” Part-time below twenty hours does not count at all.
• “The 10-year work experience requirement is based on the 10 years preceding your online skills application submission date.” The recency window moves with your submission date, so waiting can push older experience out of it.
• “ACS reserves the right to assess the relevance, and determine the standards against which the skills and knowledge of a person are assessed as being suitable (or not) for their nominated occupation(s).” There is no published list of which unit names count. There is a reserved discretion.

Data science is treated more generously than ICT at every level. A Data Science major at bachelor level can qualify on two years of recent experience; an ICT major at the same level needs four, with no recent-experience shortcut. That asymmetry is the strongest signal ACS publishes about where it currently wants applicants.

Which occupations “closely related” is measured against

ACS assesses three families, and it groups them on its own pages: Data Science occupations, IT occupations, and Cyber Security occupations. The application portal does the initial matching for you — “the portal will automatically recommend ANZSCO codes that match your skills from the list of occupations assessed by ACS” — but the nomination is yours and so is the consequence of getting it wrong.

Each occupation page carries an ANZSCO code, a one-paragraph occupation description and a duty list. The description is the part to read. To take one unit group as an example, ACS distinguishes 263211 ICT Quality Assurance Engineer (“Creates, maintains and manages technical quality assurance processes and procedures…”), 263212 ICT Support Engineer (“Develops support procedures and strategies for systems, networks, operating systems and applications development…”), 263213 ICT Systems Test Engineer (“Specifies, develops and writes test plans and test scripts, produces test cases, carries out regression testing…”) and 263299 ICT Support and Test Engineers NEC.

But the duty lists under those four descriptions are identical, word for word. All four print the same ten bullets, from “scheduling and conducting quality audit inspections” through to “creating and reviewing technical documentation”. That is a real and checkable feature of ACS’s published material, and it has a practical consequence: within a unit group, the duty list will not tell you which code to nominate. The one-paragraph occupation description will. Do not build a nomination argument out of the bullets.

ACS also warns that its occupation lists are not the operative migration lists: “Occupations on the MLTSSL change regularly. Refer to the Department of Home Affairs website for the most up-to-date listing.”

The other three pathways, and what “closely related” means in each

The Major/Minor matrix above belongs to the General Skills pathway. ACS runs four, and they are not alternatives to be shopped between — each describes a different applicant.

Pathway	Who ACS says it is for	Fee (AUD)
Post Australian Study	“an international student who has completed an Australian bachelor’s degree or higher with an IT, Data Science or Cyber Security major” plus one year of relevant Australian IT experience or the ACS Professional Year	1,136
General Skills	“an experienced IT, Data Science or Cyber Security professional with recognised tertiary qualifications and a substantial background of several years in the field”	1,498
Recognition of Prior Learning	“a seasoned IT, Data Science or Cyber Security professional with ample experience in your field but lacking formal IT or Data Science tertiary qualifications”	625
Qualification Only	an international student with “an Australian diploma or associate degree with an IT, Data Science or Cyber Security major”; also a diagnostic on ICT content for Professional Year enrolment	625

Note what Post Australian Study assumes: it is written for applicants who already have the major. It is not a route for someone whose Australian degree came back as a Minor. If your ICT content is thin, RPL is the pathway ACS designed for that situation — it substitutes a documented project portfolio and six years of experience for the qualification entirely, and which non-ICT degrees can use it is set out in which non-ICT degrees can use ACS RPL.

The reverse case — a non-ICT bachelor’s followed by an ICT master’s — has its own arithmetic, and it is not the same as holding a single ICT degree: see a non-ICT bachelor plus an ICT master’s under ACS. And the three-year-degree question, which is the one most Indian applicants arrive with, is in a three-year Indian BCA or B.Sc (IT) under ACS.

Four things to know before you nominate

The whole assessment rests on a framework you can read for free. ACS: “Migration Skills Assessment is underpinned by SFIA (Skills Framework for the Information Age).” If you want to understand how ACS is thinking about the relationship between your units, your duties and your occupation, SFIA is the vocabulary.

There is no published mapping of unit names to occupations. ACS names no “closely related” subject list for any occupation. The assessor makes the call on your transcript against the occupation description, and ACS expressly reserves the discretion. Which means the useful preparation is a syllabus, not an argument about your degree’s title.

A repeat application can go backwards. “ACS regularly reviews and updates assessment criteria adapting to IT industry and technology trends. Because of this, it is sometimes possible for returning applicants to receive an outcome not in line with their previous assessment outcomes.” Combined with ACS’s position that it “does not currently support Outcome Reassessment nor Outcome Renewals”, a two-year-old suitable outcome is a wasting asset with no renewal product behind it.

A suitable outcome is not a qualification. “Please note that a suitable letter is not a formal IT award, qualification, or license and should not be utilised as such.” What one does and does not say is decoded in what a skills assessment outcome says.

So what should you actually do

Work out which row of the matrix you are in before you pay, because the row tells you whether you have enough experience to apply at all — and if you are two years short, the answer is to wait rather than to submit. Nominate from the occupation description, not the duty bullets, because within a unit group the bullets are identical. Assemble unit outlines rather than relying on unit titles, since the Major/Minor call is made on content. And if your deadline is under twelve weeks, say so: ACS gives priority handling free and automatically to anyone in that position, with no form and no fee.

What this page does not do

It does not tell you whether your major is closely related to your occupation. ACS does not publish a mapping, does not pre-assess, and expressly reserves the right to determine relevance itself. We have not reproduced ACS’s occupation list — it is ACS’s to publish and it changes — and the operative migration occupation lists live with the Department of Home Affairs. All quotations were read from ACS’s own pages on 3 September 2026, none of which carries a visible “last updated” date. Nothing here predicts an outcome. For visa questions go to the Department of Home Affairs or a registered migration agent.