The higher education lobby, politicians, economists, and policymakers continually tout that international students are a vital export industry for Australia, generating $46 billion of export earnings for the nation.
This fantastical export figure is published by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) and is derived by combining “an average spend estimate from Tourism Research Australia … supplemented by the addition of the total expenditure on course fees”.
The ABS wrongly categorises all spending by students on a student visa as exports, even when the expenditures are paid for with Australian-earned money.
In his latest magnum opus on Australia’s political economy, Matt Barrie has demolished the notion that international education is a major export for Australia:
Our third biggest export, and up with a bullet in 2023 according to the ABS is the export of travel services, which are up a staggering 97.3% to $70.1 billion per annum.
Of this, the biggest component is education related travel services, a euphemism for immigration dressed up as education, which leapt 79.8% year on year to $47.8 billion.
Travel now represents 61.8% of total services exports of which “education related travel” is 68.2%, making this paper-pushing ponzi scheme of selling visas to students 42% of all service exports from the country.
Only that $47.8 billion dollar “export” is not really an export, and as we all know, these “students” are not really students…
Only with international students the ABS cooks the books. Quoting the ABS verbatim “The only exception to this residency guideline is for international students, who are deemed residents of their home economies for the duration of their study”.
So yes, we apparently export “rent”… Every dwelling that these international students rent, is considered by the Australian Bureau of Statistics as an export.
Effectively, we import students and we export our housing capacity.
The way the ABS calculates this “export” assumes that each international student in the country is bringing into the country at least $60,745 per annum to spend (Dr. Murray has a higher estimate of around $78,000)…
Everybody knows that the money is instead earned through employment once the students get here…
Youtube and Tiktok are full of videos from international students explaining how to rort free food out of the system.
I’m not sure why we’re providing visas for international students who can’t afford to feed themselves.
This is supposed to be an “export” not a humanitarian program.
The funds to pay for cost of living and educational expenses should be paid into some form of escrow prior to arrival, but they are not.
Barrie goes on to question why, if Australia is receiving so much export income from students, why isn’t this being reflected in remittance flows to Australia?
If education related travel services really were a $47.8 billion “export”, surely we would see at least that in cash coming into the country each year.
Digital remittances are the modern way of moving money around the world…
Surprisingly, when you look at the international remittance volume into Australia, in 2023 the entire volume coming into the country was only $1.94 billion, while outward volume surged to $9.54 billion. We see nowhere near $48 billion being contributed in…
Sure, you might argue that funds are coming in via wire transfers, but digital remittance inflows into Australia are not growing, despite a surging migrant population.
Instead we see $10 billion outward, resulting in a net flow of almost $8 billion being sucked out of the country per annum.
You’d think someone would sanity check basic numbers like these.
Barrie makes a fantastic point. The next chart plots World Bank data on migrant remittances to/from Australia:
As you can see, inflows into Australia were only $US1.6 billion in 2023 whereas outflows were $US10.3 billion, giving a record net outflow of $US8.6 billion.
Moreover, the net outflow in migrant remittances has tracked net overseas migration:
Australia’s education exports do not add up. Otherwise, why did Australia see a record $US8.6 billion of outflows from migrants in 2023 when education exports were supposedly valued at nearly $48 billion?
The truth is that the education export figure is a giant lie and the overwhelming majority of expenditure in Australia by foreign students is funded by them working in Australia.
Judging by the remittance chart above, international education is just as likely to be an import, since migrants in aggregate are sending money out of Australia to their home countries.
