00:02Australia's universities, and those who work in them, are watching the national argument
00:06about migration with a mixture of resignation and despair. Two years ago things were going
00:13so well. Foreign students were pouring $12 billion a year into their coffers, or 27%
00:18of revenue. And for some of the blue chips, like Melbourne and Sydney, it was a third.
00:23And in 2024 the government released a report called the Australian Universities Accord.
00:29It wasn't really an accord, they were trying to conjure up the glory days of the 1980s,
00:34but the universities loved it. It proposed that in order to lift productivity and the
00:39general standard of living, 80% of working Australians should be tertiary educated by 2050, and that
00:4655% should have a degree. That would mean the number of students, that is Australian ones,
00:52not foreign, would double to $1.8 million in 25 years. But now that's all in doubt. For
00:59one thing, we haven't got enough non-tertiary educated tradies, and the shortage of them
01:04is getting worse. Also, the money from foreign students pays for both research and teaching
01:11of domestic students. All three major political parties are planning to cut overseas migration.
01:17Now, the Coalition and One Nation policies would inevitably mean a drastic cut in foreign students,
01:23although they haven't spelt that out. The Labor government's target of reducing net overseas
01:27migration from 300,000 to 225,000 over two years has already led to a huge cut in the foreign
01:34student visa grant rate from 90 to 60% in July, of a lower number of applications because fewer
01:43people are bothering to apply now. So, the government now has two targets that conflict with each
01:49other, lower migration and higher tertiary education. Or rather, they will conflict unless
01:55there's a very big boost to government funding of universities, and there's no sign of that.
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