The Department of Home Affairs does not routinely report statistics on withdrawn student visa applications. At my request, they supplied me with student visa applications withdrawn data for 2019, 2023 and 2024. 2019 is my pre-COVID, pre-migration policy change, comparison year.

As I expected, with a stable market and policy framework the proportion of visa applications that are withdrawn is quite low – equivalent to around 1% of applications lodged in 2019. I don’t know of any research into these withdrawn applicants, but perhaps their circumstances changed or they received a better offer from another country.

My hypothesis in making my data request was that the period of rapid change in international education policy from the later months of 2023 created new incentives to withdraw student visa applications.

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