New visa curbs hit international student recruitment

The Australian government announced on Thursday that it has tightened the rules governing international students as part of the effort to bring down net overseas migration.

The move prompted universities and higher education experts to warn that the cumulative effect of tighter visa settings could undermine the country's ability to attract students, researchers and skills.

Under migration changes announced by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke on 17 September, most future international students will no longer automatically be able to bring partners or children to Australia.

Limited exceptions will apply to some students from Pacific and Southeast Asian countries and to students in certain courses, including PhDs. Families already in Australia will not be separated.

The Labor government is also moving to restrict so-called visa hopping by international students who seek to remain in Australia by moving between temporary visas.

The changes form part of a broader attempt to reduce Australia's net overseas migration from about 292,000 in the year to March 2026 to 245,000 in 2026 and 2027 and 225,000 in 2027 and 2028.

Proposal to slash recruitment

The measures also come amid growing political pressure for sharper reductions in temporary migration.

Pauline Hanson’s populist right-wing One Nation party has proposed cutting the number of temporary visa holders by more than 750,000 over three years, with international students and graduates among the groups facing the largest reductions.

Under One Nation’s proposal, the international student population would fall from about 590,000 to 350,000 over three years, while the number of international graduates remaining in Australia would be reduced from about 270,000 to 40,000.

The party has also proposed a new high-value postgraduate visa stream for students in fields including science, engineering and medical research.

One Nation has argued that its migration plan would reduce pressure on housing, infrastructure and public services. It has also proposed a long-term net overseas migration figure of about 130,000 a year after the initial three-year reduction.

While the Albanese government has rejected the scale of those proposed cuts, it has pursued its own tighter migration settings.

Group of Eight Universities (G08) chief executive Vicki Thomson told SBS there was a “race to the bottom” among Australian political parties “to see who can decimate our international education sector quickest”.

International students down 6.9%

The latest Department of Education data shows that 680,582 international students studied in Australia in the first five months of 2026, down 6.9% from the same period in 2025.

There were 216,884 commencements, down 8%, while total enrolments fell 8% to 752,784. Higher education enrolments were nevertheless 2% higher than in the same period of 2025.

The figures need to be read carefully because a student can have more than one enrolment during the year. The Department counts students as individuals and enrolments according to each course in which they are enrolled.

Government data also shows that international student fees generated AUD12.3 billion (approximately US$8. 745 billion) for Australian universities in 2024, accounting for 27.3% of total university revenue and making international student fees the sector's second-largest source of revenue. The dependence varies considerably between institutions.

International education as a whole was worth almost AUD55 billion to the Australian economy in 2025, including A$24.4 billion in tuition fees and A$30.4 billion in goods and services. Higher education accounted for AUD40.8 billion of that total.

The AUD55 billion supports 250,000 jobs, according to Universities Australia in a new report.

Universities Australia chief executive Luke Sheehy has described international education as a major national asset, saying it helps fund universities, supports Australia's economy and contributes to its international relationships.

In an ABC interview on 17 September, Sheehy said the new family restrictions represented another step in what he described as years of policy changes affecting international education. He said the changes would have “detrimental effects on the economy, on our world-class universities and other industries”.

Universities Australia has separately warned that substantial reductions in international student numbers would remove billions of dollars from universities and have consequences for research, teaching and the wider economy.

Concerns for research capacity

But the sector's concerns are not limited to university balance sheets.

The Group of Eight, representing Australia's leading research-intensive universities, argues that international education is also a competition for global research talent.

Thomson said Australia needed strong standards and clear rules but warned against treating all international students and institutions as though they made the same contribution.

Research-intensive universities compete internationally for students and researchers in areas such as science, engineering and medicine, she said, with those students contributing to Australia's research capacity, workforce and innovation.

“Research-intensive universities are not visa factories,” Thomson said.

Her argument points to a distinction that is becoming increasingly important in Australia’s policy debate.

International education is not a single market. It encompasses university undergraduates and postgraduate students, PhD candidates, vocational students, English-language students and school students.
Government policy already recognises some of these differences.

Higher degrees by research students are exempt from the National Planning Level, as are TAFE students under the 2027 arrangements. Other strategically important groups, including Pacific and Timor-Leste students and Australian government scholarship holders, also retain exemptions.

For Australia’s research universities, that distinction could become increasingly important if international student policy becomes more explicitly linked to national skills and research priorities.

One Nation plan ‘would cut jobs’

Peter Hurley, a higher education policy expert at Victoria University's Mitchell Institute, takes a broader view of the shift.

Asked about a hypothetical reduction in international student numbers from around 590,000 to 350,000, as proposed by One Nation, Hurley told University World News that Australian universities would be "very exposed", with large cuts to jobs, courses and research funding likely.

The scale of the potential exposure can be illustrated by the existing revenue figures. International student fees already account for more than a quarter of university revenue nationally, although dependence varies substantially between institutions.

Hurley also places Australia’s changes in a wider international context.

“I think this represents a broader shift across the world about moving away from a demand-driven international student programme to one that is more planned.

“Education is just one stream of a migration programme and other parts of the migration programme have always been subject to caps. Skilled migration, for instance, has much greater planning controls,” he said.

Hurley expects a substantial reduction in international students to translate into fewer university jobs, fewer courses and lower research funding.

Andrew Norton, professor of higher education policy at Monash Business School, offers another measure of the potential exposure.

Norton told UWN that if universities were to lose around 100,000 international students, the resulting revenue loss could be about AUD4 billion, based on the median 2026 fee reported by StudyMove.

But he stresses that this is a hypothetical calculation rather than a forecast.

It represents potential losses against 2026 levels, not a prediction of where university revenues will be three years from now.

Norton also points out that international student numbers are already being affected by existing Australian policy settings and weakness in the Chinese market that is unrelated to Australian policy.

Policy signals matter

Hurley cautions that students weigh a wide range of factors when choosing where to study, including course quality, cost, employment prospects, visa rules and personal circumstances.

Thomson’s argument is that policy signals nevertheless matter, particularly when Australia is competing for highly skilled students and researchers who can choose among multiple countries.

Sheehy has similarly argued that the broader visa settings matter alongside the headline number of places available to international students.

Universities Australia has described the 295,000 planning level as providing some certainty while arguing that other policy settings are making Australia harder and less certain for prospective students.

The government, meanwhile, says it is maintaining a managed international education system rather than abandoning international student recruitment.

For now, the 2027 planning level remains at 295,000, with higher degrees by research students and several other groups outside the main planning arrangements.

The effect of the new rules will become clearer as universities assess enrolment demand and the government implements its broader migration reforms.