The Department of Education has released international student enrolment data for the year ended January 2022, which shows there were 364,600 international students enrolled across Australia’s various education institutions, down 31% from the 529,100 students enrolled immediately prior to the pandemic in January 2020:
Pandemic hammers international student enrolments
All categories of educational institution has been hit by the decline in student enrolments. As shown in the below charts, Australia’s universities (higher education) have the lost the most students in numbers terms over the pandemic (-85,000), whereas English-language schools (ELICOS) have lost the most students in percentage terms (-83%):
English-language schools decimated
The next chart plots international student enrolments across Australia’s three biggest source nations – China, India and Nepal (30,700) – as well as overall:
Enrolments fall across all major source nations
As shown in the below charts, losses have been fairly even across major source nations, varying from -28% in China to -31% from India. In numbers terms, there are 40,100 fewer students from China compared with January 2020, with India and Nepal also down 27,700 and 12,900 respectively:
Enrolments down by nearly one-third
Total enrolments should continue to fall over the near term given the volume of students finishing their courses (of whom enrolled during the boom years) outweighs the number of new students enrolling.
This explains why the edu-migration lobby are squealing like stuck pigs, demanding the federal government relax working rights and provide easier pathways to permanent residency. They want their ‘cash cow’ back.
