The industry has called the limit on international students damaging and “a handbrake” on the sector’s growth in response to the announcement made this morning.
The national planning level for 2025 sets a total cap of 270,000 new international student commencements for the calendar year, making a clear distinction between higher education and vocational education and training sectors.
Publicly funded universities will be allocated 145,000 new international student commencements next year, which is around 2023 levels, while this number will be set at around 30,000 next year for other private universities and for non-university higher education providers – estimated to be around 2019 levels.
Similarly, VET providers face a cap of 95,000 new international student commencements. For such providers, the government said those with a “higher ratio of international students will receive a lower allocation, encouraging them to diversify their student base.”
In a positive turn of events, students taking stand-alone English language courses will not be impacted by the cap.
“New” student commencements are counted as such the first time a student starts a course with each provider. The government has clarified that international students who switch to a different course at the same provider will not count as a new enrolment, meaning that technically a student could be counted twice if they switch to a new course at a different provider once they have reached Australia.
However, this is fairly unlikely given overseas students now have to take the Genuine Student Test – and the government has vowed to crack down on so-called “course-hopping” – making it much more difficult to keep switching courses as a way to extend the right to remain in the country.
The industry has blasted the cap as unfair, largely favouring the public universities over providers that attract and recruit higher numbers of international students – with VET providers and private universities hit especially hard.
Universities Australia’s chair David Lloyd said the cap “will apply a handbrake to Australia’s second biggest export industry”.
“We acknowledge the government’s right to control migration numbers, but this should not be done at the expense of any one sector, particularly one as economically important as education.
“Curtailing growth in the AUD$48 billion international education sector risks our nation’s ambition and the university sector’s ability to support the delivery of national priorities.”
The Group of Eight also called out the government, saying the cap will damage the sector, and the nation.
“We saw yesterday at the senate inquiry that there is no economic modelling on the impact of caps, and this has not changed with today’s announcement of a national planning level target of 270,000 for international education,” said Go8 CEO Vicki Thomson.
“This policy was bad yesterday and it is bad today – the unexplained number gives us no comfort”.
She added that in imposing such a cap, the government has increased distrust of the sector in its capability to manage “this vital AUD$48b export industry”.
Students excluded from the NPL include:
- School students
- Postgraduate research students
- Students undertaking stand-alone English language courses (ELICOS)
- Non-award students
- Australian government-sponsored scholars
- Students who are part of an Australian transnational education arrangement or twinning arrangement
- Key partner foreign government scholarship holders
- Students from the Pacific and Timor-Leste.
In response to the proposed legislation, English Australia’s CEO Ian Aird also voiced concerns and urged the government to change direction on visa processing, fees and the bill.
In an official statement, he said: “This bill has been drafted on the run, without meaningful consultation of those impacted, without consideration of its economic impact or the jobs it will cost, and without concern for students.
“The bill claims to be about quality and integrity. It does nothing to require, encourage, or incentivise quality. Instead, it will drive away investment in quality and drive away quality international students.”
He added that since December last year, student visa applications have been refused and delayed at record levels, while visa grants for offshore applicants wanting to study English were down 60% from 1 January to 30 June, compared to last year.
In the bill, the government refers to the concept as ‘new international student commencements’ – a term that refers to “a new enrolment in a particular course at a particular institution”.
In a letter sent to private higher education providers, Ben Rimmer, the deputy secretary of the Department of Education, said: “The NPL will support a managed international education system that is designed to grow sustainably over time, by establishing the number of new international students able to commence their education onshore in Australia in any year.”
The announcement of the cap comes after the education minister Jason Clare revealed the cap on international enrolments was designed to replace ministerial direction 107, last week.
Subject to passage of the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment Bill 2024 (ESOS Bill), this new system will replace ministerial direction 107 from January 1 2025.
Consultancy provider Studymove’s managing director Keri Ramirez pointed out that the government should be clearer in its definition of “new student commencements”.
In a post on LinkedIn, he noted that a commencement refers to “a new enrolment in a particular course at a particular institution”, whereas a new student refers to a student who is “a new arrival to Australia”.
With government statistics logging vastly different numbers of each metric – with 207,522 higher education student commencements and 152,511 new students noted in 2023 respectively – he said it was “important to get clarity on the metric that will be used for the proposed limits”.
The move came after the numbers of international students staying in Australia on a second, or subsequent student visa has grown by over 30% to more than 150,000 in 2022-23, according to Australia’s Migration Review, published at the end of last year.
“The biggest growth in visa hopping has been in the VET sector, where there is a lower likelihood of a credible course progression. However, in 2022/23 almost 69,000 students granted a subsequent student visa in Australia have stayed in, or shifted into, studying in VET, compared to 42,000 students pre-pandemic in 2018/19,” the Review reads.
