The Coalition’s plan to reduce international student numbers – some first thoughts

Andrew Norton6 Comments

As rumoured in recent months, the Coalition has decided, if it wins office on 3 May, to cap commencing international student enrolments at a percentage of all commencing enrolments. The precise number is yet to be settled, but is expected to be around 25% and will only apply to public universities.

Student experience as well as migration concerns

A key conceptual difference with the government’s policy is that the Coalition wants to improve the domestic student experience as well as take pressure off accommodation markets. That’s why they chose a % of enrolments rather than, as under Labor, formulas driven by past enrolment patterns – although Labor did include a penalty for institutions with high concentrations of international students.

So far as I know, no careful research examines whether high concentrations of international students adversely affect domestic students in measurable ways. There are many anecdotal complaints, especially around group assignments. Is it a coincidence that computing, engineering and business courses, which have high concentrations of international students, have relatively low student satisfaction (chart below)?

Perhaps international students have nothing to do with it. Long ago, looking at the old CEQ results, I observed that students in vocational courses seem less satisfied than other students. Speculatively they have more instrumental motivations, and so enjoy study less. They study in fields where universities compete with industry and the professions for staff. Academic salaries might not attract the best possible teachers.

Questions about the domestic student experience are at least worth asking and answering as best we can. Universities are too conflicted to do it or release the results if they do. It’s another argument for making higher education data available to researchers inside and outside the academy (e61 is doing a great job on this kind of research).

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Mapping Australian higher education 2023 – data update March 2025

Andrew Norton2 Comments

Update 20/12/2025: More recent data here.

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I won’t have the capacity to produce another edition of my Mapping Australian higher education report in the foreseeable future, but I am extending the life of the October 2023 edition by updating the data behind the charts.

Mapping‘s chart data is the only publicly-available source of long-term time series data on many higher education topics, especially on financial matters.

I had been waiting on the 2023 university finances report before releasing another chart data update. That finally happened yesterday. Despite a record 27 universities reporting deficits, in the aggregate there was a small surplus, after a loss overall in 2022.

2023 had some weak numbers for the two main Commonwealth student programs, the Commonwealth Grant Scheme and HELP. Several factors were behind this: temporary COVID places coming out of the system, Job-ready Graduates reductions in total funding rates for some courses, and weak domestic demand. These programs trended up in 2024 and 2025, as seen in the chart below, although high CPI-driven indexation was a significant factor.

The updated chart data is available here.

Student visa applications withdrawn

Andrew Norton1 Comment

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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Preliminary 2025 funding per university for Commonwealth supported places

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Due to the Department of Education’s under-reporting of higher education funding, last year I consolidated institution-level information into a spreadsheet. There were about 250 downloads each for the original and a subsequent updated spreadsheet, so I decided it was worth doing again this year. The data sources are the funding determinations for the various funding categories.

I emphasised ‘preliminary’ in the post title because the FEE-FREE Uni Ready funding is not yet included. While this is a little frustrating, the upside is that when it is added the amounts involved will be more transparent than might otherwise have been the case. [Update 28/2/25: In Senate estimates yesterday the Department said that FEE-FREE Uni Ready funding equivalent to historical enabling places as of 2022 were included in the funding agreements. Funding for new FEE-FREE Uni Ready places is yet to be released.]

The headline figures to date are Commonwealth Grant Scheme (CGS) – $8.2 billion, estimated HECS-HELP lending of $5.9 billion, and estimated upfront student contributions of $700 million. Overall, about $14.8 billion, with 95% coming from the Commonwealth in cash flow terms. That percentage will go up when we get the FEE-FREE Uni Ready information.

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Are the government’s policies working to reduce international student numbers? Part 2, student visas granted

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A previous post looked at demand from international students, as measured by student visa applications. By July 2024 all student deterrent policies announced to date were in place, so the last six months of 2024 could be used to assess initial policy impact.

That analysis found that demand for vocational education declined significantly, whether compared to 2023 or the more normal pre-COVID year of 2019. For higher education, demand was down on 2023. Compared to 2019, higher education demand in 2024 from migration-sensitive countries like India or Pakistan was well down, but demand from other important source countries increased or decreased only slightly.

Visa applications of course must be assessed by the Department of Home Affairs. Visas granted depend on visa processing levels and visa grant rates.

The visa grant analysis below is broadly consistent the first post’s applications analysis. Visa applications and grants in 2024 were both down on 2023. However, 2024 visa applications were up on 2019 but visa grants were down, reflecting fewer applications being processed and lower approval rates.

For both visa applications and grants vocational education has been hit hard. Higher education is more resilient overall, with visa applications and grants both up on 2019.

Due to unprocessed applications and unresolved appeals against visa application rejections, not all 2024 applications have been finalised. These could result in 2025 visa grants that exceed expectations created by recent application levels.

Less clear links between cause and effect

Drawing straightish lines between policy changes and policy consequences is harder for visa grants than applications. Delays between visa applications and processing complicate the analysis. By mid-2024 Home Affairs had a huge backlog – over 113,000 unprocessed applications – including many received prior to 23 March 2024 when significant rule changes came into effect. Because some old rules apply to applications received before policy change dates, different criteria can be used in the same processing month.

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Are the government’s policies working to reduce international student numbers? Part 1, student demand

Andrew Norton3 Comments

From late 2023 to July 2024 the federal government implemented at least nine policies to reduce international student numbers. With full 2024 student visa data released late last week this is a good time to assess how well (or how badly, depending on your point of view) these policies are going.

This post looks at the demand side, how many student visa applications have been lodged. A subsequent post will look at the supply side, visas granted.

The main findings are that the government’s policies have worked to substantially reduce demand for vocational education overall and from migration-sensitive countries in higher education, such as India and Pakistan. However 2024 Chinese higher education applications were down only slightly on 2023 and remain up on 2019. The impact on other traditional higher education source countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong was also muted (all slightly up or down).

Overall demand

As can be seen in the chart below, in 2024 the Department of Home Affairs received 429,691 student visa applications. This was down 20% on 2023, but still above 2019, the last full year before COVID migration restrictions distorted supply and demand.

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Update on Accord student funding policies

Andrew Norton7 Comments

With a break between jobs and other things going on I did not comment in December on the Accord-related MYEFO student funding announcements. Compared to last year’s consultation papers, the announcements included a policy change on over-enrolments, more detail on how under-enrolments will be handled, and funding amounts.

Over-enrolments

One of the worst ideas in the June 2024 managed growth consultation paper was a hard cap on Commonwealth supported places. Currently the main CSP category has a soft cap – once a university enrols CSPs valued at its maximum basic grant amount it gets only the student contribution for additional students. These student contribution-only places are known as ‘over-enrolments’. Under a hard capped system over-enrolments would receive zero funding. I explained why hard caps are a bad idea in this post.

In its MYEFO summary the government backed off a little from the hard cap idea. Now universities ‘will continue to receive student contribution amounts for a small proportion of additional students’. The reason given was the practical difficulty of hitting a precise enrolment target. [Update: At a Senate estimates hearing on 27/2/25 the Department said that ‘the overenrolment buffer will be between two per cent and five per cent’.]

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Robert Menzies and the Murray review of universities

Andrew Norton5 Comments

An earlier post looked at Robert Menzies and higher education, first as Opposition leader and then as Prime Minister, from 1945 to 1956. Despite important structural changes in the early 1950s, with the Commonwealth commencing grants to universities via the states and directly financing Commonwealth scholarships, the university sector remained small and financially weak.

In March 1956, Menzies agreed to a university policy review, what became the Murray report. This post draws on my chapter on the Murray report in The Menzies Ascendancy: Fortune, Stability, Progress 1954–1961, edited by Zachary Gorman and published last month.

The appointment of Keith Murray to review universities

By the time Menzies agreed to the review he had already decided that major changes to university policy were needed.

In his book The Measure of the Years, Menzies says that prior to his trip to England in 1956, where he first met Keith Murray in person, he told Treasurer Artie Fadden that he was initiating an enterprise that could not fail to be ‘vastly expensive’.

In December 1956 Murray was appointed as chairman. The four other members included CSIRO Chairman Ian Clunies-Ross, believed to be the subsequent report’s main author.

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Robert Menzies and higher education, 1945 to 1956

Andrew Norton3 Comments

I’m not an historian, but decided to accept a Robert Menzies Institute suggestion that I give a paper on the 1957 Murray report on universities for their 2023 conference on Menzies, which covered the years from 1954 to 1961. The book chapter version of that paper came out in December 2024.

As well as describing events surrounding the Murray report I tried some counter-factual history, in an attempt to understand the distinctive contribution of Menzies to Australian higher education policy. The post-WW2 period saw higher education expand in all the countries with which Australia compared itself. With or without Menzies, Australia’s pre-WW2 model of one impoverished, low-enrolment university in each capital city was not a plausible long-term system.

But what would have happened if Labor had remained in power after 1949, or won the close 1954 election? What would have happened if someone other than Menzies had led the Liberal Party (or the main non-Labor party, given Menzies’ role in creating the Liberal Party)?

This post looks at what happened up to 1956. A subsequent post examines the Murray report and its consequences.

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