Report criticises top Australian universities for relying too much on overseas students for revenue

Some of the nation’s top universities have been hit hard as pandemic shutdowns cut their revenue from overseas students— but there could be an obvious solution.

Some of the nation’s top universities are heavily reliant on overseas students.

Australian universities hit by the coronavirus pandemic have only themselves to blame since they put all their “financial eggs” into the foreign student basket, says a new report.

The Australian Population Research Institute study has revealed that revenue from overseas students more than doubled to $8.9 billion from 2012 to 2018.

But pandemic shutdowns have put a brake on the lucrative industry, with universities facing financial black holes and big job cuts.

Some of the nation’s top universities are heavily reliant on overseas students.

The report The Crisis in the Overseas Student Industry: How Should Government Respond? has new data showing the huge reliance on foreign students, especially by the elite, so-called group-of-eight universities.

In 2018, 43.6 per cent of first-year enrolling students at Monash University were from overseas — up from 24 per cent six years earlier.

The corresponding figures for Melbourne University were 41.2 per cent and 27.3 per cent.

Canberra’s Australian National University had the highest overseas enrolment rate in 2018 with 48.8 per cent (up from 28.8 per cent), while Sydney University’s figures were 45.6 per cent and 22.8 per cent.

Australian Population Research Institute director Dr Bob Birrell.

Report authors Dr Bob Birrell and Dr Katharine Betts said these universities were especially affected by the pandemic because of the high number of Chinese students they attract.

“Some 67,919 of the total of 177,442 Chinese citizens holding student visas were not in Australia at the end of March 2020 (when the border closed),” they said.

The group-of-eight universities charge foreigners $40,000-plus a year for undergraduate and Masters courses compared to $25,000 for the lower-tier institutions.

Monash University.

Some of the bigger universities, like Melbourne, Monash and Sydney, stand to lose up to $400 million each in budgeted revenue in 2020-21 due to the pandemic.

The authors said universities were now seeking government help, but it should be noted they “chose to put all their financial eggs in the overseas student revenue basket”.

“When they had the opportunity to do so they also chose to ignore any responsibility to train extra domestic students, and to forgo any focus on research targeted at applied issues in Australia,” they said.

The report said universities should only be compensated in return for major reforms, with far more teaching devoted to local students, and research refocused to Australian industry, social and environmental needs.

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