Treat us like mining: Universities warn of 4500 job cuts over student crackdown

Universities are warning 4500 jobs could go as the government’s international student clampdown leaves a $500 million hole in their budgets and are calling for the same bipartisan support as the mining industry receives.

Universities Australia chief executive Luke Sheehy will use a speech to the sector on Wednesday to accuse Labor and the Coalition of running on a “unity ticket” to slash growth in international education and to reject claims that foreign students are to blame for Australia’s housing shortage.

Universities Australia’s Luke Sheehy will say universities are forecasting a collective shortfall of at least half a billion dollars this year due to the visa processing changes and increase in visa cancellations.Credit: Joe Armao

“The current policy approach to international education is anything but cohesive – it is policy chaos, starting last year with the rollout of visa processing changes,” Sheehy will say of Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil’s December direction to prioritise visa applications to study at top-tier universities.

“Framed as measures to shore up the sector’s integrity, we now have every reason to believe these changes were a cap by stealth on international students.”

After months of trying to restrain the influx of foreign students, the government announced ahead of the May budget it would impose a cap on their numbers as a lever to halve net overseas migration to 260,000 by next July.

The federal opposition has also promised a cap should the Coalition win government at the next election, with both parties linking the 677,000 international students in Australia to the housing crisis.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has targeted the University of Sydney over its high proportion of overseas students, while Education Minister Jason Clare has warned international education cannot lose its social licence.

“Rarely do the major parties find common ground on migration, but here they are on a unity ticket with the shared aim of shutting the door to international students. Seldom has another major export industry been treated as a political plaything in the way international education is right now,” Sheehy will say in his speech to the ITEC24 international education symposium.

He will say there were more international students enrolled in higher education in 2019 than last year, when the migration and housing debate began in earnest.

“Other factors, not international students, are to blame,” he will say. “The political imperative to act lies in Australia’s housing crisis – a mess for which international students have become convenient scapegoats.”

Sheehy will say universities are forecasting a collective shortfall of at least half a billion dollars this year due to the visa processing changes and increase in visa cancellations, which he said would “inevitably” lead to cuts to campus infrastructure, research and jobs.

“A funding shortfall of $500 million could claim as many as four and a half thousand jobs across the sector. That would mean more people out of work during a cost-of-living crisis, driving up unemployment and adding further pressure to the government’s budget bottom line,” a copy of the speech says.

Sheehy will say the crackdown on the $48 billion sector could have knock-on effects for 250,000 jobs nationally, and hinder the tourism sector, which is aided by many people visiting students.

The peak body head will appeal to both sides of politics to give tertiary educators the same support as the mining sector, which, according to the Minerals Council, raked in $455 billion in export revenue in 2022-23.

“The two major parties insisted that as long as there is international demand for exports, Australia will continue to sell its resources to the world,” he will say.

“Australia does not yet have the complexity in its economy to abandon the sectors that pay our nation’s way. Education, right after mining, is one of those sectors.”

The total overseas student population in Australia was 634,000 in September 2019. It fell to 318,000 during the pandemic, government figures show, but has rebounded strongly, fuelling community concerns about housing shortages and urban congestion.

Draft laws, introduced to parliament by Clare last month, would automatically ban universities that breached their international student caps from enrolling more students for up to a year.

The legislative changes to boost the integrity of the tertiary education sector while slimming its size would also bar new providers from recruiting overseas students for two years and suspend those who did not teach any foreign students in a 12-month stretch to weed out so-called “ghost colleges”.

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