Unintended consequences risk as parties target overseas students

Australia’s bipartisan assault on international students risks splitting families, breaching diplomatic commitments and slashing the aged care workforce while further undermining universities’ faltering finances, critics say.

Commentators have warned of unintended consequences from the latest proposals to cut student numbers, released early this week by the federal opposition. They include replacing graduate work rights with “post-study transitional visas” available only to people completing health and education courses, doctoral programmes and regional university degrees.

Students’ visas would also be linked to their “enrolling” institutions, and those wishing to change providers or extend their studies would have to leave Australia to obtain fresh visas.

The opposition expects its plans, which go further than the government’s recently enacted changes, to reduce the overseas share of higher education students to less than 25 per cent. It currently stands at about 35 per cent.

Critics say the abolition of temporary graduate visas would breach the terms of a trade pact the opposition negotiated when it was last in government. Nishidhar Borra, president of the Association of Australian Education Representatives in India, noted that then trade minister Dan Tehan had promised Indian graduates up to four years’ post-study work rights when he signed the Australia-India Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement in 2022.

Business groups say the proposals could fall doubly hard on aged care, with current workers forced to leave when their visas expire, and potential future workers largely ineligible for post-study work. Opposition leader Angus Taylor acknowledged the changes would affect “some” foreign aged care staff, according to the ABC.

The International Education Association of Australia said the opposition planned to “pull the welcome mat” from foreign students by denying them the chance to convert expensive qualifications into “course-related” jobs. “These are the very skills our economy needs in allied health, IT and engineering,” chief executive Phil Honeywood told the Australian Financial Review.

Sydney-based education agent Tirtha Khatiwada said some students’ lives appeared to have been upended by the government’s latest policy overhaul. They included a new mother who needed to leave Australia to apply for a fresh visa, because her plans did not satisfy an “exemption” for onshore applications, but would then be barred from bringing her husband and baby back into the country.

Another pregnant student needed to leave Australia “urgently” to lodge a fresh visa application, but had been advised by her doctor not to fly. “I never thought the Australian government could introduce policies this harsh,” Khatiwada said.

Tertiary education consultant Claire Field said the ban on dependants would disproportionately affect institutions in Victoria and Western Australia, whose “student profile” included substantial enrolments from Bhutan, India and Nepal.

Field said the ban was the latest in an “extraordinary succession of policy and regulatory changes” which had undermined overseas student flows. By early October, public universities had reached just two-thirds of their collective allocation for international student places this year.

Just five institutions – the rich quartet of Melbourne, Monash, Sydney and UNSW Sydney, along with Edith Cowan University – had so far reached 80 per cent of their individual allocations. The low figures reflected mounting visa rejections, with only 79 per cent of primary higher education visa applications granted in the latest data period, down from 92 per cent in recent years.

International students injected A$14.4 billion (£7.6 billion) into publicly funded universities last year, with contributions ranging from A$20 million at the University of New England to A$1.75 billion at Monash. The tally seems likely to fall this year, with the gap at the institutional level rising.

“International students have become the political answer to a funding problem nobody wants to discuss,” said Group of Eight chief executive Vicki Thomson. “The reality is that international student revenue cross-subsidises research and teaching because Australia’s uni funding system doesn’t meet the full cost of either.”

Sydney education consultant Edward Slade said next week’s industrial action at the University of Sydney, where the National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) is seeking a 20 per cent pay rise, exemplified the “painful restructuring” awaiting the sector. “With all major parties now looking to reduce international student numbers and bar their families from joining them – and now (potentially) to end post-study work rights – the tertiary sector faces a bleak outlook.

Universities may have to cut their research spending and programmes, he warned, or cut staff, which would incur “the wrath of the NTEU”.

Andrew McLean, the head of Tin Alley Ventures, a venture capital fund affiliated with the University of Melbourne, said net overseas migration targets had assumed undue influence over education policy. “It’s a little sad that an appropriate and nuanced conversation about immigration (and the fault is on both sides of this conversation) has collapsed into a competition over a single number.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com