More international student enrolment curbs feared in Australia

Australian educators fear that more crackdowns on international education may be looming, as migration continues to pose political headaches for the governing Labor Party.

Legislation introduced into parliament gives the Australian Tertiary Education Commission (Atec) the power to set quotas for overseas enrolments at each university and higher education college. Meanwhile, the latest monthly visa processing figures show that one in four would-be higher education students were denied visas after lodging their paperwork abroad, together with the non-refundable A$2,000 (£1,044) application fee.

The 75 per cent success rate in May appears to have been artificially inflated by a slowdown in the processing of visa applications from the countries most likely to elicit rejections – Nepal and Bangladesh, whose grant rates slumped to 34 per cent and 40 per cent respectively.

Nepalese applications constituted 12 per cent of the visa lodgement caseload but just 8 per cent of the visas processed, the figures show. Applications from Bangladesh comprised 8 per cent of lodgements but 6 per cent of the processing effort.

Tougher visa processing may have contributed to a decline in net overseas migration (Nom), which fell 12 per cent in 2025 to just under 301,000. Immigration expert Abul Rizvi said that while this was well below some alarmist estimates, it was considerably higher than the government’s long-term net migration target of 225,000.

“Labor will need to do more tightening soon or it won’t get to its target before the election,” Rizvi warned.

The government’s adversaries are sharpening their rhetoric over the issue. “Mass migration is changing Australia for the worse,” opposition leader Angus Taylor told parliament in May. “With Labor having opened the migration floodgates, the dream of home ownership has become a nightmare.”

Pauline Hanson, leader of the populist One Nation party, told the National Press Club that the government had presided over an “immigration catastrophe” in “the middle of a national housing crisis”.

A claim on social media that Hanson had combined with Labor to again increase the student visa fee, this time to A$5,000, turned out to be unfounded. In fact, the government and One Nation had voted against a Greens attempt to overturn the March doubling of fees for post-study work visas.

However, insiders warn that other measures to curb foreign enrolments may be under consideration. Consultant Claire Field has estimated that the government could reduce overseas student numbers by 80,000 if it copied the UK in preventing most overseas students from bringing their partners or children.

“If the government did follow the UK lead [it] would reduce Australia’s attractiveness as a study destination [and] reduce the number of skilled graduates [available to] Australian employers…but it would also reduce Nom numbers,” Field wrote in The Koala international education news.

The government plans to change its mechanism for controlling the numbers of international students, who dominate the Nom figures. Under arrangements enshrined in the new higher education funding bill, the determination of foreign student quotas at each institution will be outsourced to Atec.

While the quotas are not hard caps – they influence the pace of visa processing but not the number of admissions – they may be enforced more strictly under the proposals. A document explaining the legislation warns that universities could undermine their future operations by flouting their international student quotas.

“A provider exceeding their allocation of international student places may be considered by the Atec in negotiating the terms of future [mission-based] compacts,” the document says.

The bill also empowers the education minister to vary the overall allocation of foreign student places “to align with government priorities for the sector and remain responsive to changing circumstances, such as shifts in overseas student demand”, the document adds.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com