Universities face financial bind after drop in international student visa approval rate
The Albanese government has been accused of pulling the rug from universities after the visa approval rate for international students fell in October, despite the green light to boost numbers.
The Albanese government has been accused of pulling the rug from Australian universities after the visa approvals rate for international students took a sharp downward turn, despite the sector being given the green light to boost numbers.
According to the latest Department of Home Affairs data, the approval rate for international student visas fell below 75 per cent in October compared with 83.6 per cent at the same time last year.
But the number of international students applying for visas increased by more than 15 per cent from 19,857 to 22,905 in the same period after the government announced it would be relaxing quotas following a tightening of student caps for the past 18 months.
Visa approval rates for China, the largest source of international students in Australia, dropped sharply from 93 per cent last October to less than 85 per cent this year due to a spike in rejections – the second-lowest approval rate for the period since 2010.
In the past decade, the average approval rate for Chinese students has rarely dropped below 90 per cent.
Approval rates for India, the second-largest source of international students, also plummeted from 64 per cent to 52 per cent.
The downward trend comes despite Education Minister Jason Clare announcing in mid-October that 25,000 extra international student places will be added to the system next year, with 31 out of 32 universities receiving approval to boost their numbers.
Former immigration official Abul Rizvi said alarm bells would be ringing for public universities and their bottom lines if the visa approvals rate continues to fall next month.
“I haven’t seen such a sharp drop in visa grant rates in a long time … and it’s very odd, it’s hard to tell if this is deliberate or not. Either it’s an aberration (in the data) or a policy change we don’t know about,” Dr Rizvi said.
“If the October pattern continues, the universities will be in financial trouble. They have all been planning for a big influx of international students and a big inflow of tuition fees because the government told them to prepare for it.
“The universities would have been celebrating three months ago so (these approval rates) would be quite frustrating.”
Dr Rizvi said the data suggested internal divisions over migration policy could be at play, sparking the pullback on numbers, due to the decline in approval rates for Chinese and Indian students while rates for Nepalese students, the third-largest international cohort, remained relatively stable at 80 per cent.
During August and September, overall approval rates also hovered at 86 per cent while applications steadily increased.
The international student data comes as Sussan Ley prepares to announce a suite of Coalition principles on migration as she makes the issue her next policy battle with the government, sparking calls for both major parties to set long-term migration plans and hard targets.
The Opposition Leader previously said the Coalition would crack down on international students gaming the system by using education to jump to other visas.
But Ms Ley has shut down setting student caps until the government provides its own net overseas migration data.
Opposition education spokesman Julian Leeser said the visa numbers presented a “quagmire of unanswered questions”.
“The Albanese government have been signalling that they are cutting international student numbers at the same time as increasing allocations to providers. It is bizarre,” Mr Leeser said.
“The most confusing part is that the government seems to be ignoring the issues that actually matter – student experiences on campus, the quality of teaching, affordability of housing and cost-of-living pressures students are facing every day.”
Mr Clare and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke were contacted for comment.
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