The Albanese government aims to cap new international student enrolments in Australia to 270,000 in 2025 and dump a controversial ministerial direction that gave priority to students applying to low-risk institutions.
In a statement released on Tuesday the education minister, Jason Clare, revealed the details of the proposed national planning level, which would pare university enrolments back to 145,000, or around their 2023 levels.
Under the reforms private universities and non-university higher education providers will be able to enroll 30,000 new international students in 2025; while vocational education and training providers will be limited to just 95,000.
Clare told reporters in Sydney that the plan – which is subject to a bill still before parliament – would result in universities having 15% more international student enrolments than before the pandemic while “private vocational providers will be about 20% less”.
Clare said that ministerial direction 107, a regulation enacted in December 2023 giving priority to students applying to low-risk institutions, had proven to be a “pretty blunt instrument”.
“It has meant a few universities have got a lot more international students this year than they did last year,” he said.
While “a lot of universities have got a lot less”, he said, citing Newcastle, Wollongong, Griffith, Charles Darwin and La Trobe universities as those who had been “bearing the brunt of this”.
Clare said that universities had asked for a “better”, “fairer system”.
Labor has been heavily criticised by the tertiary education sector for pursuing a plan to cap international students to counter political attacks about the level of arrivals and net migration, in the absence of evidence students are exacerbating housing shortages.
In July, Labor more than doubled the non-refundable application fee for international students, in a further effort to cut net immigration from 528,000 in 2022-2023 to 260,000 by 2024-25.
Universities pointed to evidence from treasury that existing measures to lower enrolments had already achieved the desired reduction.
