Foreign student cuts ‘will cost the taxpayers’, says universities chief Carolyn Evan

The new Universities Australia chair, as well as warning of loss of foreign-student income, says universities are being asked to do ‘incompatible things’ with freedoms and student safety.

Griffith University vice-chancellor and new Universities Australia chair Carolyn Evans. Picture: Peter Wallis

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The new chair of the universities peak body says taxpayers will need to contribute more to the sector if the Albanese government wants to permanently reduce the number of international students coming into Australia.

New Universities Australia chair and Griffith University vice-chancellor Carolyn Evans also said governments needed to think about how obligations of academic freedom, freedom of speech and student safety were being prioritised on campuses ­because universities were “being asked to do sometimes incompatible things”.

Education Minister Jason Clare previously told The Australian that Ministerial Direction 111 might stay in place, as it had already reduced student visa applications by about 30 per cent this year and was “working”.

Professor Evans said the sector needed a “rational and growth-oriented” approach to international students, but that if the government decided it needed to limit numbers, then taxpayers may need to foot the bill.

“The reality is that there are three primary sources of funding for the higher education sector: there’s student fees, both domestic and international; there’s taxpayer funding in a variety of forms; and then there are third sources of funding … through commercialisation, industry partnerships … (and) philanthropy. That third source is still relatively modest.

“Domestic students and the Australian taxpayer have benefited greatly from the amount of funding that international students have contributed to the system over several decades.

“I think it is not possible to ask university staff to take on larger classes, more teaching, more workload. That’s one of the ways that we try and deal with reductions of funding. If international funding is going to be permanently decreased, we will need to ask whether it might be necessary for the taxpayer to contribute more,” she said.

Professor Evans said universities needed certainty about international student numbers and “processes” for 2026 over the “next few weeks”, and hoped to move swiftly with the second-term Albanese government on big ticket policy items that would influence sustainability, such as international students, needs-based funding and reform to the Job-ready Graduates, and the creation of an Australian Tertiary Education Commission (ATEC).

She said discussion around the government’s move to strengthen university governance needed to be “focused on governance and not everything people might have concerns about with respect to universities”.

While it was reasonable to question vice-chancellor salaries, she asked “how fundamentally will it change the picture?”

“If my salary disappeared altogether, it would barely change the picture at all. It would make no real difference to job security, to class sizes, to the capacity to undertake research. We could add a few more staff, which would be a fraction of 1 per cent.

“I don’t have a problem with people raising the issue, but there’s a far more fundamental issue that I really do think should be prioritised first and if we were a more truly publicly funded … university sector, I think the calls to have more public-linked salaries would have greater resonance.”

Professor Evans, who wrote a book with Adrienne Stone on academic freedom and freedom of speech in Australian universities, said institutions were being pulled in different directions.

“Almost anything that anybody says is academic freedom on a campus, it’s not. It’s about staff with expertise in particular areas exercising that expertise by making comments including comments that might be controversial or difficult,” she said.

“Universities are in a difficult position at the moment because we have sets of obligations that pull us in each direction.

“We have clear legal requirements around academic freedom and freedom of speech that are enforceable by TEQSA and were a high priority a few years ago. And we also have obligations with respect to psychological safety and safety of students, which are also legislated and are also a high priority.

“I think there might be an important piece of work to be done, not just by us, but by governments, thinking about the way in which those get prioritised because at the moment we’re being asked to do sometimes incompatible things.”

Professor Evans said she found US President Donald Trump’s attempts to exert control on US universities “very troubling” and “should be a cautionary tale”.

She said Australian universities would certainly welcome the sorts of international students “who get into Harvard” if the Trump administration were successful in blocking their enrolments.

“We also just need to be conscious that university autonomy is a very deep notion in Western societies, in part because we recognise the danger that when governments start overreaching they have the potential to fundamentally undermine the core purpose of universities – which is about independent thinking and inquiry, and sometimes that includes saying things that might be troubling to people in power.

“Trump, I think, shows us very much where we should not be wanting to go as a country. It doesn’t mean that universities shouldn’t be accountable. They absolutely should be, but I feel terrible for the Australian and other students who in some cases who have been saving for years and for whom this will have been an extraordinary moment.”