Government to cap number of foreign students to 270,000 next year

The federal government will cap the number of foreign students who can study in Australia next year. The limit will be set at 270,000.

Transcript

00:00It's fair to say the entire university sector has been sweating on this announcement.

00:06There have been predictions of job losses as well as a broader hit to the economy.

00:10The tourism sector and business groups have been among those expressing concern.

00:14The Education Minister, Jason Clare, says that the figures he's announced today show

00:19that international education is not going to take a huge hit in Australia, that numbers

00:24will be, for 2025, will be broadly similar to 2023.

00:29As you mentioned, the headline figure is 270,000 international students total.

00:36For public universities, their share of that is about 145,000, with the rest made up of

00:43private universities or private vocational education providers.

00:48The Minister hasn't given us a breakdown of how individual universities are affected.

00:52He said that letters are going out right now to vice chancellors setting out those figures

00:57and they'll be finalised ahead of the legislation going to Parliament in about two weeks.

01:04For some universities, some big universities, it'll be lower than it was last year.

01:08For some of the smaller universities, some of the universities that have been hit hard

01:14by Ministerial Direction 107, it'll be higher next year than it is this year.

01:19So it's designed to build a better and a fairer system.

01:22The fact is, the universities I mentioned, like Newcastle, like Wollongong, like Griffith,

01:28like Charles Darwin, like La Trobe, like the University of Tasmania, they're the sort of

01:32universities that have borne the brunt of Ministerial Direction 107.

01:37They're the sort of universities that will benefit from building a better and a fairer

01:40way of setting levels for universities and international students.

01:45In the past, the government playbook with universities has been to divide and conquer.

01:49As the Minister alluded to there, he says that some universities are actually going

01:54to do better out of this announcement than they have done in the past.

01:57However, we know some universities are very likely to have their numbers reduced.

02:03The universities that are most likely to be feeling the pinch are the University of Sydney

02:08and the University of Melbourne, who have a very high percentage of their total student

02:12body from overseas.

02:14We don't have those figures confirmed yet, though.

02:16Like everyone else, we're waiting for the individual university announcements, so we

02:21expect that there will be some parts of the university sector who will be okay with this

02:26and others who will be very upset.

02:28And privately, they've told me that there could be job losses and that there could be

02:33a broader hit to the economy in places where international students are very important

02:39for getting the economy going.