International Students

The Coalition is under scrutiny for joining forces with the Greens to block legislation to cap new international student numbers from 2025.

Any objective analysis of Australia’s international education sector would conclude that enrolment numbers are too high.

English Australia CEO Ian Aird claims that the federal government’s proposal to cap international student numbers will have an economic impact on more than just the education sector.

The latest temporary visa statistics from the Department of Home Affairs revealed 2,463,600 temporary visa holders in Australia, excluding visitors, as of 30 September 2024.

One of the nation’s least-kept secrets is that most international students come to Australia to “study” because of our generous work rights and opportunities for permanent residency.

Anyone with half a brain knows that reducing the number of international students (and migration in general) will help to ease the rental crisis.

The Department of Home Affairs released temporary visa data for the September quarter of 2024, revealing that there were 2,463,600 temporary visa holders in Australia, excluding visitors, at the end of September.

The ABC’s Jacob Greber claims that the international education sector is an “export giant” that is being unfairly targeted by the federal government’s desire to lower net overseas migration.

Justin Fabo at Antipodean Macro has compiled data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) showing that the unemployment rate for recent arrivals to Australia surged to around 8% in Q3, up from around 5% at the trough.

The e61 Institute has published an interesting report examining so-called “visa hopping” by international students to extend their stays in Australia.

Following a strategic review of the student visa program in 2011 (the “Knight Review”), the Gillard government significantly enhanced employment rights for graduate (485) visas in 2013.

The AFR this week reported that the number of temporary migrants in Australia spiked by around 100,000 in the past year, with the volume of student visas surging to an all-time high 679,293 at the end of August.

Preliminary data reported in The SMH shows that the number of offshore student visa applications fell to 18,697 in July, compared with 36,207 during the same period in 2023.

For many years, MB has argued that the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) estimate of the export of education is exaggerated because it incorrectly included income from international students working in Australia.

Earlier this month, the chair of Australia’s National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, attacked the federal government’s international student caps and downplayed their impact on the rental market by citing spurious Student Accommodation Council (SAC) report.

The Australian’s Stephen Matchett has written an interesting article on the barriers Australian universities face when opening campuses offshore.

In 2022, Claire Field, a former vocational training sector regulator, warned that a large number of South Asian students were arriving in Australia in “response to the unlimited work rights now available to those on Australian student visas”, enrolling in “lower quality and cheaper vocational colleges” to enter Australia to live and work.

In 2019, the United Nations accused Blackstone, the world’s largest private real estate manager with $470 billion on its platform, of “wreaking havoc” in communities and contributing to the global housing crisis by increasing rents and “aggressive evictions”.