This week the government announced the overall international student cap for 2025, of 270,000 new commencing students, with some student types not counted towards the cap. I have a high-level summary in The Conversation. This post explores the capping announcement in more detail, noting additional problems with this deeply flawed policy.

The power – or lack thereof – to exempt particular types of students

On Tuesday the government announced three new exemption categories:

• students who are part of “twinning” arrangements, taking some of their course offshore before coming to Australia
• students with Australian government or “key partner” foreign government scholarships
• students from the Pacific and Timor-Leste.

On my reading of the bill, the last two exemptions are not supported by its current wording and the twinning exemption is probably not within the bill’s existing scope.

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