Earlier this month, the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) released its statement on monetary policy for February 2025, which looks at the year to the September 2024 quarter.
The quarterly report explains how the RBA sees the economy and what that means for interest rates, inflation, and economic growth. The most recent report painted a bleak picture for Australia’s international education sector.
“Education exports were weaker than expected due to a tightening in student visa requirements and an unexpected decline in the average expenditure,” the report read.
Elsewhere, it highlighted that its “contacts are very uncertain about the outlook for international student enrolments in 2025, reporting that some prospective students are preferring to apply to other countries given higher uncertainty about whether they will be granted a place in Australia”.
Education exports were weaker than expected due to a tightening in student visa requirements and an unexpected decline in the average expenditure
Reserve Bank of Australia
The Group of Eight has since warned that visa policies that “fail to address” the structural funding issues Australia’s universities face will “only lead to greater confusion for our international students and risk further damaging the sector, with wider consequences for the Australian economy”.
A raft of restrictive measures have been recently introduced by the Australian government relating to international students. In 2024, the financial capacity requirement increased for the second time in seven months, meaning international students are required to show proof of savings of at least AUD$29,710.
In the same year, student visa application fees doubled.
More recently, following a derailed attempt to introduce a blunt cap on international enrolments, the government imposed a new visa-processing directive – Ministerial Direction 111.
Tied to the individual provider caps previously assigned to institutions under the government’s proposed National Planning Level, the new directive sees departmental officials prioritising student visas for each provider until they reach 80% of their cap figure, also known as their net overseas student commencement number.
For the Go8 universities, this represents a government-imposed 28% reduction relative to indicative 2024 international student numbers.
“This translates into a big hit to Go8 activities in the national interest, such as world-leading fundamental research and making up domestic funding shortfalls in much needed fields such as medicine and veterinary sciences,” the Go8 laid out in its briefing.
Elsewhere, it added that international students have been “scapegoated” for domestic problems associated with cost of living, meaning the international reputation of Australia’s $51 billion international education sector has been “damaged”.
“We are now seeing reductions to export income for Australia, that flow through to reduced support for Australian businesses and employment.”
The Go8 asserts that spending by international students “propped up” Australia’s economy post-pandemic and was responsible for more than half the nation’s economic growth.
“On average, spending by one international student supports employment of one person in Australia. Cutting international students means cutting business prosperity and Australian jobs,” it added.
