Smart politics sends university Group of Eight a clear message

The cash cut will hurt worse Group of Eight capital city campuses, such as the University of Sydney, which have used international student fees to fund opulent building programs and capital-intensive research.

The Albanese government has done what it was always going to do and will regulate international student numbers from next year.

This is smart politics, plus it is an improvement on existing ineptly managed immigration rules, and it sends vice-chancellors of old and rich universities a clear message – they can protest as much as they like (and they have) but their opposition is politically irrelevant.

It is also ordinary policy. The creation of international enrolment quotas for universities and vocational colleges demonstrates the government is back in the business of regulating higher education and training – there will be more of this very soon. It is also in the business of blaming universities for the national housing shortage and immigration rackets that bother voters.

The first is ridiculous – inter­national students paying top rental dollar occurs in inner-cities and has nothing to do with skilled labour shortages delaying housing starts across the country.

The second is blame shifting – student visa rorts are mainly a problem in the training sector where bodgy colleges pretend they are educating so-called students who are actually in Australia to work.

While the new quotas rightly apply to training colleges, including universities demonstrates the government is on to immigration and housing problems. It is also why the opposition will be wise to wave the student caps bill through the Senate, unless it wants to give Labor the chance to blame the ­Coalition for both.

Overall, the National Planning Level announced on Tuesday will not end the international education industry. The total cap of 270,000 new students next year is within coo-ee of what were record numbers pre-pandemic; ditto for universities’ 145,000 share.

Yet all universities enrolling international students have their quotas and the losers are already complaining. There will be warnings of a collapse in Australia’s international research ranking as international student fees stop funding new science kit, and of job losses as casual teaching staff will not be needed.

It won’t occur all at once and not everywhere. The cash cut will hurt worse Group of Eight capital city campuses (the universities of Sydney and Melbourne are standout examples), which have used international student fees to fund opulent building programs and capital-intensive research.

Early estimates put their 2025 international quotas at around pre-pandemic numbers, but 20 per cent plus down on this year.

In contrast, there are vice-chancellors who hope their universities will pick up international students the big metro campuses cannot accommodate.

This is unlikely: students in China know about Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and that’s about it. Yet hope springs eternal and some universities have already supported the new scheme.

It’s one reason the government will get away with it – the higher education system is split on caps.

All up, this looks like an immediate win for the government with another to follow.

The government has a new agency, the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, ready to go. It would have powers to regulate Australian student admissions, allocate funding and create closer links with training. If vice-chancellors think international student caps is peak interference, they ain’t seen nothing yet.