Since the draft Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024 was released back in May, the sector has been overwhelmingly opposed to the government’s plan to impose enrolment limits on international students. Yesterday the government announced its plans to implement National Planning Levels, with individual universities receiving their indicative new overseas student commencement limits for 2025. It only took a matter of hours for universities that will benefit in 2025 to break ranks and support the government’s announcement.
Positive responses
University of Wollongong: Interim Vice-Chancellor Professor John Dewar said that the removal of Ministerial Direction 107 and replacement with the new caps “is fairer and more sustainable than the current visa processing regime”. Although UOW’s cap for 2025 is said to be fewer than in 2023, reports are that will be a much smaller hit to revenue than if caps had been set at 2019 levels.
Deakin University: Vice-Chancellor Professor Iain Martin had been advocating for an institutional cap of 35 per cent. With yesterday’s announcement, Deakin’s indicative ISP will be 5,800, which Professor Martin said was close to 2019 and 2023, and “broadly in line with financial and operational plans for 2025. I am relieved to see this confirmation of our ISP for next year. This certainly enables us to plan with greater confidence for Deakin”.
Charles Sturt University: CSU went a step further, with Vice-Chancellor Professor Renée Leon saying that CSU “welcomes the Government’s announcement of new arrangements to manage international student numbers across the higher education sector. We particularly welcome the decision to allocate the majority of international student places to public universities…”
Why is this a bad thing?
The positive responses to the announcement are motivated by self-interest, although not entirely unexpected from a sector that has long struggled to have a consistent message to the government about international students.
Some may argue that these universities are just being pragmatic; supporting enrolment limits over the damage caused by Ministerial Direction 107, ignoring that there is a world that is not either/or, but neither. Others are saying that the numbers aren’t as bad as some feared they may be.
This ignores the fundamental issue with Part 7 and 8 of the ESOS Amendment Bill; it is bad policy. The reasons to justify this claim of bad policy have been well covered over the last several months, but there is one that is worth highlighting in the context of yesterday’s announcement.
Put simply, the government is attempting to manipulate student choice. The methodology used to calculate 2025 new student enrolment limits penalises institutions with high international student concentrations or large growth between 2019 and 2023 and significantly penalises the VET sector.
But as Andrew Norton, Professor in the Practice of Higher Education Policy at The Australian National University argues “while fairer visa processing will help some education providers increase their enrolments, capping popular universities below student demand won’t necessarily help other universities in Australia.”
“Few students who want to attend high-prestige universities or want to live in large cities will go to lower prestige or regional universities instead. They just won’t come to Australia.”
Opponents
Universities and peak bodies negatively impacted by yesterday’s announcement were equally quick to express their outrage.
Group of Eight: The Group of Eight and its Chief Executive, Vicki Thomson, came out firing in response to the government’s announcement, stating that the Go8 “remains implacably opposed to international student caps for the damage they will do to the sector and the nation”. With Go8 providers reportedly taking a hit of 22,000 in their 2025 cap, the Go8 did not hold back in its criticism, with words like ‘steamroll’ ‘clumsy’ ‘reckless’ and ‘fiasco’ used in its media release. It also accuses the government of trying to bully the Senate into passing the legislation by publicly announcing caps. The full release is well worth a read.
Universities Australia: UA was less damning of the announcement than the Go8, although it criticised the National Planning Levels as applying a ‘handbrake to Australia’s second biggest export industry’ and repeated its claims that Ministerial Direction 107 had taken a ‘sledgehammer’ to the sector, again calling for it to be immediately revoked.
The University of Melbourne: Vice-Chancellor Professor Duncan Maskell said that Melbourne “remains strongly opposed to this cap on international student enrolments. It is staggering that we continue to have this debate while there is apparently no serious intent to address really major reform issues”. He also expressed concern that there had been no consultation process and the methodology was never discussed.
Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia: With the VET sector taking a massive hit yesterday, it was surprising that ITECA’s media release was not stronger in condemning the government’s announcement, with Troy Williams, ITECA Chief Executive, saying that “on the one hand the establishment of the National Planning Level is welcome”. He does go on to call for “immediate and precise information” for individual providers.
Naresh Gulati, CEO of Ascent One, a platform for higher education providers to manage agent networks, admissions and marketing, also criticised the announcement. “This is a disappointing and short-sighted decision by the government and one that stands in stark contrast to the US and UK which are welcoming international students with open arms,” he said.
Provider risk ratings
There has also been some commentary that removing Ministerial Direction 107 and imposing enrolment limits means that provider risk ratings will go. There has been no signal from the government of an intention to replace the current risk rating process. For a government that claims to be committed to quality and integrity, it will want to maintain this in the student visa program. We are watching this space with interest, wondering what others know that we don’t know.
What happens now?
Although Minister for Education, Jason Clare has expressed willingness to consider some amendments to the Bill, via Senate deliberations, it is now almost certain that enrolment limits will be included.
Responding to the Government’s announcement yesterday, Shadow Minister for Education, Senator Sarah Henderson and Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Dan Tehan, said that “while the Coalition welcomes student caps, we will examine the detail of today’s announcement”. However, it’s unlikely that the Opposition will shed any tears over hits to student numbers or revenue of the Group of Eight, with Senator Henderson making plain her views on these providers throughout the Senate Committee hearings into the Bill.
Andrew Norton has a dire warning for the sector, “the number of new international students in 2025 could easily be much lower than 270,000”.
If you haven’t already, catch up on Koala’s Analysis of new National Planning Levels – what you need to know.
