Labor rift opens over Australia’s international student caps

Australian Labor state governments are openly challenging their Canberra colleagues’ policies to curtail overseas enrolments, with Victorian premier Jacinta Allan launching an initiative to attract more foreign students during a visit to India.

Ms Allan said the A$5 million (£2.6 million) “Yes to International Students” scheme would offer “targeted seed funding” to Victorian universities and public training colleges, or TAFEs, to establish offshore partnerships including joint course delivery with “reputable” international universities.

Ms Allan called on the federal government to guarantee that transnational education students would not be counted towards the proposed international enrolment caps.

Canberra has indicated that students in transnational education or twinning arrangements will be exempted from the quotas. But a Senate committee heard that the Department of Education was “working through the finer detail” of this promise.

Ms Allan said Victoria welcomed international students. “We say ‘no’ to the federal government’s caps. Our new fund is going to help our unis and TAFEs find innovative ways to challenge them,” she said.

Earlier, Victorian treasurer Tim Pallas and skills minister Gayle Tierney told the federal government that the caps would have “significant implications and unintended consequences” for their state’s largest export industry.

“We are particularly concerned about the disproportionately negative impacts the proposed caps may have on Victorian regional universities, especially Federation University,” a 6 September letter says. “We call on the Australian government to abandon the caps. At a minimum, we ask you to consider a flexible cap with less punitive measures…or delaying implementation to 2026.”

Labor governments in New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) have also expressed concern about the caps. “Constraining universities’ ability to attract and enrol international students may have long-term, currently unforeseen impacts,” ACT chief minister Andrew Barr warns in a letter to federal education minister Jason Clare. “There is a risk that measures are perceived as signalling that international students are not welcome.”

That message has already been received, according to analytics company Voyage. Its monitoring of students’ social media activity found that their net positive sentiment towards Australia had tumbled from almost 60 per cent in July 2023 to less than 10 per cent by May 2024.

“Many feel that their dreams of studying in Australia are under constant threat and their voices are perpetually ignored in the heated political debate,” Voyage’s senior product manager Stephen Reimann told a 17 September webinar. “It’s…seen as being driven by election-year populism rather than a sustainable and fair policymaking process.”

Melissa Banks, a former head of international education with the Australian Trade Commission, said these perceptions were shared by both prospective and existing students. “[Those] who are already here are…feeling really quite anxious,” she told the webinar. “They have potentially come here for a long educational journey that might involve more than one visa.”

The analysis found that perceptions of the quality and outcomes of Australian education had declined particularly steeply. “We are effectively following Canada’s footprints,” Ms Banks said. “If we’re not rated for good quality of education, then what do we offer? The policy intent is to reduce the number of…international students in Australia, but potentially [it] will be positioning Australia as low-quality education producing poor-quality outcomes. It’s pretty hard to come back from that.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com