STORY: ::August 27, 2024
::Sydney, Australia
::Australia set to limit international student
enrollments in a migration crackdown
::Jason Clare/Australia education minister
“Today I can announce that subject to the Bill passing the overall number of international students starting a course next year will be set at 270,000 this includes higher education courses and vocational education and training courses. And what this means is next year that there will be about the same number of international students starting a course here as there were before the pandemic, there’ll be more in our universities and there will be fewer in our private vocational providers.”
“There’s about 10% more international students in our universities today than before the pandemic and about 50% more in our private vocational and training providers. Students are back but so are the shocks – people that are seeking to exploit this industry to make a quick buck and we are implementing a number of reforms to tackle that.”
The decision follows a raft of actions since last year to end COVID-era concessions for foreign students and workers in Australia that helped businesses recruit staff locally while strict border controls kept overseas workers out.
The reforms are designed to make the international student sector better and fairer, and this will set it up on a more sustainable footing going forward, Clare said.
International education is one of Australia’s largest export industries and was worth A$36.4 billion ($24.7 billion) to the economy in the 2022-2023 financial year. The record migration – driven by students from India, China and Philippines – has expanded labour supply and restrained wage pressures, but it exacerbated an already tight housing market.