Uni of Tasmania VC Rufus Black backs caps on international students

University of Tasmania vice-chancellor Rufus Black has backed introducing caps to manage the number of international students.

University of Tasmania vice chancellor Rufus Black. Picture: Nikki Davis-Jones

University of Tasmania vice-chancellor Rufus Black has backed the introduction of a form of cap on the number of international students to help the federal government reduce Australia’s record migration level.

“We recognise the government has sound policy reasons for reducing total net migration and part of this involved moving from an essentially free market to a managed approach to international student numbers,” Professor Black told The Australian.

He pointed to Canada – which announced in January that it would cut number of new international student arrivals this year by 35 per cent compared with 2023 – as a model for Australia.

The Canadian model also will shift students from cities such as Toronto that have experienced large growth in student numbers, to other cities and provinces that are able to accept more students.

“As Canada has done, we need to move to a managed model for how international students are distributed around the nation to ensure that the economic, skill, social and population benefits are appropriately and fairly distributed,” Professor Black said.

Support for a limit on international student arrivals is controversial among Australian universities, but institutions such as the University of Tasmania that have only a small share of the international student market increasingly see it as a way to preserve their share as larger and richer universities become even more successful in scooping up international students and their lucrative tuition fee revenue.

For example the University of Sydney earned $1.4bn in international student fees in 2022 and is likely to earn considerably more now. It is understood that international students, mainly from China, now make up more than half the University of Sydney student body.

The University of Tasmania is one of 10 universities that last month were assigned a higher student visa risk rating by the federal government that makes it more difficult for them to recruit international students. A higher risk rating means students have to meet tougher thresholds to be granted a visa; for example, to prove financial capacity or English language competency.

The University of Tasmania and the University of New England have joined Federation University at level three, the highest level of risk.

Professor Black said his university had prioritised Tasmania’s skill needs “over chasing visa ratings”.

“But the consequence is that without changes to a more managed system, we may struggle to do that in the future,” he said.

University of New England vice-chancellor Chris Moran said his university stood by the quality of its international students but the government actions were “having a significant impact on UNE’s ability to recruit our international cohort”.

“The changes to visa assessment have a disproportionate impact on smaller universities and there isn’t a more urgent issue for government to address,” Professor Moran said.

Another eight universities have dropped from low visa risk (level one) to medium risk (level two). They are Curtin University, Griffith University, Queensland University of Technology, Western Sydney University, Murdoch University, the University of South Australia, Swinburne University and the University of Notre Dame.

Murdoch University vice-chancellor Andrew Deeks said the problem for his university was not so much the increased risk level but “some of the more arbitrary decisions being made (by the Department of Home Affairs) in respect to individual (student visa) applicants who we have thoroughly screened”.

He said Murdoch “consistently applied very stringent evidentiary requirements to assess the genuineness of applicants and will continue to do so”.