Student caps debate sits at crossroads of much bigger issues

When Age reporter Clay Lucas investigated “ghost colleges” in Melbourne’s CBD last year, he was told that these “academies” and “institutes” – many of them with little to no visible student body on site – were making a mockery of both our education and immigration systems.

The federal government’s decision to cap the number of international students admitted to tertiary education represents a daring intervention into these two vexed and intertwined areas.

There can be no question that the student visa system has become a back door into this country for many people with no study plans. Often, as University of Sydney academic Salvatore Babones put it, “they are simply overpaying for a work visa”. But in the worst cases they are opening themselves up to exploitation and conditions akin to slavery.

Restoring integrity to that system is a worthy objective but also a daunting one. Our reporting has shown that even those who initially apply for a visa at a reputable university or college may later transfer to a less demanding course or institution under the guise of “concurrent study”, so that they may in effect abandon study for a job.

If the federal government is concerned with reducing the number of international student arrivals from its post-pandemic surge, opponents of the move have other numbers on their minds, from the billions of dollars flowing into university coffers, which subsidise prestigious research programs and domestic students, to the jobs created and filled by our international student cohort.

Some in the education sector have suggested that a government struggling to articulate its overall policy on migration amid a cost-of-living crisis has seized upon the international student intake as low-hanging fruit. To blame those we invited to study here for issues such as rising rents is both unfair and simplistic, given that rents rose during the pandemic too, in the students’ absence. Migration and housing are policy challenges with many facets, so cutting student numbers alone, or trying to direct the intake away from metropolitan centres, is unlikely to substantially address either of them in the long term.

At the top end of the tertiary sector – the Group of Eight universities – the caps have been described as “arbitrary” and “staggering”. These universities have lamented a lack of consultation and the absence of plans to address the issues of funding teaching and research.

They have also forecast that attempts by the government to engineer where students choose to study will put at risk the entire $48 billion industry – by federal Education Minister Jason Clare’s own assessment, the “biggest export we don’t dig out of the ground”.

Elsewhere the perspective is not nearly so bleak. Perhaps unsurprisingly, universities outside the Group of Eight see an opportunity in Clare’s stated intention of redistributing enrolments to regional institutions. When La Trobe University’s long-term credit rating slipped, it pointed to the new quotas to predict that “this, combined with other areas of growth, will put us on a sound financial footing”.

Indeed, a top credit ratings agency was far more sanguine about Group of Eight member Melbourne University’s prospects than its own vice-chancellor, Duncan Maskell, seems to be, predicting that despite the enrolment caps “we expect [the university’s] balance sheet to remain very strong”.

The challenge for the federal government’s policy on enrolments is clear: can it make a wider array of universities appealing in the international marketplace and lift all boats? At the Australian National University, another Group of Eight member, higher education expert Professor Andrew Norton was dismissive: “The whole idea that a Chinese student who wants to go to the University of Sydney will instead go to Southern Cross University is completely unrealistic. They simply won’t come to Australia.”

Beating this logic will require the federal government to send a clearer signal of the value it puts on the contribution and skills of international students, and indeed those from their ranks who choose to make this country their home.

That in turn means Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his ministers have to spell out and champion a long-term vision around Australia’s immigration. Former immigration official Abul Rizvi told our reporter Angus Thompson that in isolation, caps on student numbers were “colour and movement”, but a more structured net migration plan “would be a big deal”.

Both these agenda items are of course part of a larger economic narrative, one in which the role of an educated Australian workforce remains crucial. Not only does the federal government have to contend with continued opposition scrutiny over immigration, but at the same time Labor state governments are urging it to reconsider the caps, with Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas urging his federal colleagues to “go back to the drawing board”.

Beating corruption in the sector, evening out the playing field and keeping Australian universities competitive against international rivals are all objectives worthy of our support. We hope that the federal government has studied carefully for the exams ahead.

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