Just like many of my Higher Education peers, I have been following the international student capping saga. Even a brief look at the caps proposed suggests that either there are super-valid reasons for trimming a currently successful and profitable (at large) industry or our government is becoming delusional in its efforts to regulate the Higher Ed sector in some mysterious ways.
My conclusion: it is the latter.
To restore my, and others, faith in the government law-making institutions, I decided to put on my data analyst hat and investigate the key premises that the government has been deploying to provide a rationale for the international student caping. As evident from the analysis below, not only has my faith not been restored but even more questions and doubts were triggered.
This culminated in doing my share for the Inquiry into the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024 [Provisions] by sending my submission through. You can read the full submission (submission #118) on the Enquiry Portal here and below is The Koala-tailored version of the key points I raised. One does not have to be a rocket scientist to see how broken (as far as data analytics is concerned) the government’s premises are!
In summary, while the purpose of international student caping is to make both our economy and our education industry healthier (or so we are being told), there is little, if any, evidence that the caping approach will achieve either of these.
The key rationale for the caps’ introduction that have been voiced are:
- Curbing Migration to the Pre-Pandemic Levels
- Resolving the Housing Crisis
- Building Sustainable Future our Higher Education Industry
- Bringing more International Students to Regional Australia
So, like many others, I was trying to understand how the caps will help accomplish these goals.
Migration
As far as curbing migration to the pre-pandemic levels is concerned, I am at odds with the government. I believe that economic modelling would confirm that having more young, hardworking, educated people settling in Australia is going to be good for our economy, not bad. We have seen this via Australia’s use of migration settings to avoid global and regional economic crises’ over the past 20 years.
As an analytics professional, I can state with full confidence that unless the Government has carried out modelling or studies that demonstrated a DIRECT link between the benefits of International Student Caps and Curbing Immigration (I am not saying such studies have not been carried out – it is just that I could not find any), suggesting that Caps, which are likely to have a detrimental economic effect, are the only option to reduce the immigration is at best what Data Scientists refer to as Implicit Testing and at worst – speculations.
I have seen no evidence of studies that demonstrate that the study-curbing caps are the OPTIMAL way of addressing migration (even if higher migration numbers are a problem rather than a blessing) issue. True, the link between the International Education sector and Migration is evident …but the benefits of dealing with the issue via the introduction of the Caps (as opposed to alternatives available) are not, and to date, public discourse has ignored the positive benefits that students bring.
Given the obvious lack of evidence, why not consider less detrimental measures? The benefits are not transparent, and the potential for serious long-term damage to industry and to the entire economy is growing as we continue to learn via witness testimonies at Senate committee hearings.
Housing
Next comes the perceived role of international students in triggering the housing crisis. While I’ve seen statements suggesting a higher intake of international students into Australia may contribute to the so-called housing crisis, I have seen no data-driven evidence that the international student intake is one of the key reasons – rental costs/property costs are going up. The fact that international students currently make only up to 4% of our rental market says it all! From the Rent/Housing analytics perspective, even if (and this is yet to be evidenced) International Students are impacting rent/property prices. The impact is unlikely to be significant, or as the treasurer says (TKN 22/5/24) “at the margins, at best”.
When the government tells us that this is how we build a stronger and more sustainable higher education sector, even more data analysts are going to raise eyebrows. I understand that politicians love to use ‘’loud slogans’’. But from a management/analytics/economics perspective – unless there is a clear metric to define and assess this so-called ‘’Sustainable Future’’, it is nothing but a slogan! At the very least, it would be good to learn more about the government’s vision of what ‘’Sustainable Future’ ’means to them first and how the introduction of the caps contributes to building a yellow brick road to this future!
Promotion of the Regions
Finally, the goal of bringing more international students to regional Australia. I am not disputing that the introduction of International Student Caps may benefit some institutions that are ‘’modest’’ in capacity and currently do not have many students in the short term. But what about the long-term impact? Reduction of the overall marketplace (and studies of various industry sectors, including the education sector, have been demonstrating it rather consistently) is likely to put all education providers at a disadvantage in the long term.
To sum up, if we use an evidence-based approach to international student capping, there doesn’t appear to be much rationale for it.
