source : the age
Australia’s higher education sector was already grappling with a decline in foreign students before the Coalition revealed its plans this week to slash commencements by 55,000 each year, a pledge that experts say risks “creating a very significant hole” in university budgets.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor’s announcement on Tuesday came as the number of international student visa approvals plunged under Labor, with one in four applicants now being rejected.
The increase in visa rejections has come ahead of recent policy announcements from the government to curb overall migration by cutting net migration, including by targeting visa hopping and reducing visas for family members of students.
The Coalition’s pledge includes a reduction to the share of international students in higher education to below 25 per cent, abolishing the temporary graduate visa that allows students who have finished their studies to live and work in Australia temporarily, and cutting international student commencements to 240,000 per year – down from the government’s planning level for next year of 295,000 students.
Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Zlatko Skrbis, who studied in Victoria as an international student in the 1990s, said the accumulation announcements affecting international students were already being weighed into student decisions.
“I think it’s fair to say that across the whole sector, we are noticing a shift in the market,” Skrbis said. “It’s anxiety about the safety of their investment in international education opportunities. These are not insignificant decisions that people are making to come to Australia and study.”
Universities Australia chief executive Luke Sheehy said curbing international students would be “extraordinarily challenging” for universities.
“Universities are already under significant financial pressure. Public funding has not kept pace with the cost of teaching, research and infrastructure, and international education has helped fill that gap,” he said. “For some universities, these policies risk creating a very significant hole in their budgets. We cannot yet put a definitive sector-wide dollar figure on the impact, and the effect would not be uniform across institutions.”
He said successive governments encouraged the growth of international education while universities increasingly relied on that revenue to fill gaps in public funding.
“Universities did not arrive at this funding model by accident,” Sheehy said. “If governments want fewer international students, they need to explain what will replace that funding and what the consequences will be.”
The number of primary applicants for higher education visas approved by the federal government declined by 25 per cent over the past three years, falling from 261,317 visas in 2022-23 when Labor took office, to 195,607 visas in 2025-26. Over the same period, the rate of approvals fell from 87.5 per cent to 84 per cent, despite a reduction in applicants.
In 2024, the University of Sydney modelled that a 30 per cent reduction in student visas – the equivalent of 63,500 fewer international students enrolled – the following year would cause universities overall to lose $1.1 billion in revenue.
The same year, researchers for the University of Melbourne and Monash University found that it would cost the state $5.9 billion if there were 30,000 fewer foreign students at Victoria’s universities.
At Australian Catholic University, Skrbis warns that the political debate could harm Australia’s reputation among students abroad.
“We shouldn’t be confusing legitimate concerns with political expediency. That’s where my concern lies. I’m hopeful that we can have a reasonable debate around the numbers,” he said. “I absolutely agree there are certain things that happen within the current system that need to be looked at. Visa hopping is absolutely a legitimate area of concern and focus.”
The Group of Eight lobby group – whose members include the University of Melbourne and University of Sydney, UNSW Sydney and Monash University – opposes removing the temporary graduate visa, pointing out they include engineers, researchers and specialists.
Western Sydney University vice-chancellor George Williams said many students at the university went on to fill gaps in nursing and aged care.
“Our international nursing students work in the region’s hospitals and health facilities, helping address a shortage of about 10,000 nurses in the fast-growing region,” he said.
He pointed out that roughly a quarter of every dollar of revenue from international students is reinvested in supporting Australian students at the universities.
“This support is vital to keep students from poorer backgrounds in study.”
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Jackson Graham is an education reporter at The Age. He was previously an explainer reporter.Connect via email.
