By Gwilym Croucher and Chris Ziguras, higher education researchers

For decades, Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada have sought to attract international students, with large numbers coming from fast growing Asian countries, and in particular China. 

To attract international students all three countries have used national branding campaigns and favourable visa conditions, including post-study work rights. Importantly, they have also used involved migration rules that favoured graduates with certain types of skills.

Until recently, all three countries managed international education in two main ways. First, quality assurance systems focused on the education international students received. Second, visa systems focused on which students could enter the country, how much they could work and how long they could stay.

This approach worked well, with each country experiencing significant growth in international student numbers. In Australia the number of international students has grown on average around 5% per year since 2005 with Asian countries dominating the top ten. China, in particular, has been a significant source country for Australia over the last two decades and, at times, has been the second or third most popular destination for Chinese students after the United States and the UK.

International student numbers grew very quickly after borders reopened post-pandemic. In Australia, there were 717,587 international students studying during the January-May 2024 period, an increase of 18 per cent compared to the same period in 2023. 

In 2023, there were over 166,000 Chinese international students, which was lower than the 2019 peak of around 212,000. However, this was partially offset by growth in student numbers from central Asia in 2023, particularly India (126,000) and Nepal (57,000), driving high growth.

Rapid recovery was similar to that experienced in Canada and the UK. Now, all three governments have become concerned and have sought new ways to manage the student inflow.

While many within the education sector argued the surge in new students was a short-term feature of the post-COVID recovery, it proved very easy for others to portray the situation as "immigration out of control!” 

Last Tuesday Education Minister Jason Clare made an announcement that could reshape the landscape of international education in Australia. He revealed that Australian universities, TAFES and vocational colleges will have caps on the number of new international students they can enrol from 2025.

The approach is highly complicated. It involves some groups of students and, excludes others, and uses formulas that apply differently to different institutions.

It will take some time for each institution to understand what this means for them and for sector-wide effects to kick in. Many details are also not yet public.

However, it is already clear Australia has taken a highly bureaucratic approach.

Our comparison with similar recent moves in the United Kingdom and Canada suggests it could set a new benchmark in government micromanagement of international education.

What happened in Canada and the UK

After the pandemic, the number of international students in Canada grew by around 30 per cent per year for two years in a row. By 2023, there were more than one million international students in the country, compared with around 600,000 two years earlier. Chinese students made up around 10 per cent of enrolments, while Indian students made up over 40 per cent of enrolments in 2023.

In response, the Canadian government announced it would cap the number of study permits to reduce the number of new international students in vocational and undergraduate programs by 35 per cent in 2024.

The number of international students in the UK has also surged, reaching a historic high of more than 750,000 in 2023. This growth was entirely driven by an increase in students from non-European Union countries, as the number of students coming from the EU declined by 8 per cent. Chinese (154,000) and Indian (173,000) students were by far the largest source countries. 

In response, the UK government stopped allowing international students to bring their partners and children with them. 

A new interventionist approach in Australia

Initially, through Ministerial Direction 107 (signed in December 2023), the Australian government tried to reduce the surge in new students by denying large numbers of student visa applications.

The Department of Home Affairs’ approach disproportionately affected students from India and low-income countries while having little impact on students from China. The approach also disproportionately hit universities outside big cities and those with fewer international students.

Unfortunately, this completely undermined the Department of Education’s long-term strategy, which has been focused on increasing the diversity of the student population and the diversity of providers, a parallel policy objective to the government’s broader aim of encouraging trade diversification from dependence on China.

So now the Albanese government is trying again. This time, each institution will be allocated a quota of new international students for 2025.

Australia’s largest universities, which also have high proportions of international students and are the most research focussed, will see the biggest cuts.

Many of these will have caps on new students set halfway between their 2019 and 2023 commencing numbers. Universities with the smallest proportions of international students will have their caps set at 2023 numbers. Private tertiary providers look like they will have significant cuts too. 

What now?

The overall result will mean international students will find it more difficult to study at the large and highly-ranked universities in Sydney and Melbourne. There will also be far fewer places in private colleges for lower-cost vocational programs.

The winners are public universities and TAFEs that currently enrol fewer international students.

What happens beyond 2025 is anyone’s guess and will be determined through negotiations between the yet-to-be-established Australian Tertiary Education Commission and each provider.

What is clear is that Australia is joining with two of our major competitors to take significant steps to manage international student enrolments.

Gwilym Croucher is Associate Professor of Higher Education Policy & Management Education and Chris Ziguras is Professor and director of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education, both at the University of Melbourne. 

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