A comprehensive ANU analysis of international education demonstrates the impact of changes in government policy on the HE sector.
The paper sets out the impacts of decades of confusion in the way government has failed to manage quickly changing cycles of easing and restricting access post study.
The essence of Alen Gamlen, Peter McDonald and Sahar Zia’s argument is that student numbers are always matters for migration as well as education policy.
“The challenge is not just deciding whether Australia should admit more or fewer international students, but governing the different purposes of international education coherently: to maintain educational quality and migration integrity while recognising the economic, institutional and international functions the system has come to perform,” they write in a paper for the university’s migration hub.
And they demonstrate how we got to the present politicised state. They set out how the system grew from the foreign-policy purpose of the Colombo Plan 70 years ago through the Howard years, when studying in Australia was incentivised by skilled migration opportunities and “became something more than education.” Policy wise, much, much more, “combining university finances, export earnings, labour-market policy and the possibility of settlement. Australian qualifications could carry both migration and educational value.”
Student numbers ebbed and flowed as policies changed according to political and economic circumstances. Arrivals collapsed under COVID and then quickly extended to help universities assist businesses that demanded more workers. “But faster arrivals and longer post-study stays also increased the temporary migrant population. Policies designed for recovery helped create the conditions in which migration restraint soon returned to the agenda.”
There is a great deal of very detailed detail in the paper on student markets, the way visas shape demand, the interaction between study and pursuit of permanent residence, plus how international students do not drive up national housing demand, “the relevant question is not whether international students exert the same housing pressure everywhere, but where their demand is concentrated, what kind of housing they use and how large their share of the local rental market actually is.”
The core message is that after decades of changing numbers of students, the challenge for government is to coherently address the different purposes of international education, “to maintain educational quality and migration integrity while recognising the economic, institutional and international functions the system has come to perform.”
“Without greater clarity about those purposes and the trade-offs between them,” they warn, “policy is likely to continue swinging between expansion and restriction.”