Since the release of indicative New Overseas Student Commencements (NOSC) provider limits for 2025, the sector (including The Koala) has put much (necessary) effort into exposing the deep flaws with the Government’s methodology. But we mustn’t lose sight of the most fundamental flaw in the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024, which lies in the extraordinary power it grants the Minister for Education to set enrolment limits at all.
I’ve observed an assumption creeping into the debate, with the release of 2025 indicative caps, that the Government will approach the setting of caps in future years in the same way as 2025. However, in its current form, the draft of the Bill allows for the Minister to impose enrolment limits on “new and ongoing overseas students enrolled in all courses provided by the provider in the year” (emphasis added).
Indeed, when the Minister for Education, Jason Clare, introduced the Bill to Parliament in May, he said that the application of caps to new students in 2025 were “transitional provisions”, indicating an intention to apply caps to all students from 2026.
Professor George Williams, Western Sydney University Vice-Chancellor, was one of the stellar performers during the Senate Education and Employment Committee hearings into the Bill, being invited to appear twice. (That’s not just my view, even the Group of Eight quoted him after the hearings).
But something Professor Williams said in the third hearing of the Senate Committee inquiry into the Bill made my ears prick up, and that was, “When I think of those perverse outcomes, one will be that universities like ours will immediately look to optimise the numbers of students we bring in by prioritising multi-year degrees over single-year degrees”.
We have also seen providers offering large agent commissions (TKN 190924) and student scholarships in a race to recruit as many students as possible in 2024, to beat the 2025 caps.
The danger for the sector in ‘front-loading’ new student enrolments in 2024 and 2025, especially for multi-year courses, is that this could backfire in 2026 and out years, depending on what methodology the Government decides to apply to new and ongoing student enrolment limits. For example, it could compromise a provider’s ability to recruit a new student pipeline if the cap needs to consider a large ongoing student body.
As the Bill allows for different enrolment limits to be set, using a different approach every year to new or new and ongoing students, the sector will be left constantly second-guessing which students it should recruit to maximise its caps.
With the fourth Senate Committee hearing set for Wednesday, 2 October, and the Committee’s report due on 8 October, the sector must continue to advocate for the Government to shelve enrolment limits and work collaboratively with the sector to develop a strategy that ensures the sustainability of Australia’s international education industry.
