With the beginning of the new academic year only a month away, Australia’s universities are reporting historically high applications from international students to study in 2024.
But the numbers of students coming into Australia is expected to drop due to visa approval rates for students hitting a record low.
For the past 15 years, the student visa application approval rate ran at well over 90%, but last year it fell to 82%, and for vocational education the rate dropped to a low of 70% in the six months to December 2023, according to new government data.
Based on the trend in approval rates, Australia is expected to accept around 90,000 fewer student visa holders in 2023-24 than the previous year, the ICEF Monitorreported.
The government of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is trying to reduce a dramatic increase in migrants since the country’s borders were opened in November 2021, post-COVID and is clamping down on entry by ‘non-genuine’ students.
Over 510,000 migrants arrived on Australia’s shores in the 2022-23 period, out of which 270,000 were international students. Before the pandemic, in 2018 to 2019, that figure was 170,000.
There were in 768,000 students living in Australia in January to October 2023, according to government data. This represented a 29% rise on the year before.
This number, together with the surge in migration since the pandemic, has fuelled a housing crisis, which is, in turn, creating deep resentments among the Australian public as rents contribute to cost-of-living pressures for voters.
The Albanese government, facing an election later this year, is attempting to cut the migrant flows and is targeting international students who come through unscrupulous agents.
A raft of new regulations in relation to student visas was introduced by the government late last year. They include the capping of the hours a student can work to 48 hours a fortnight and increasing the amount of savings to AU$24,000 a student needs to show before getting a visa.
In addition, students are no longer allowed to switch their enrolment from a high-cost to a low-cost college within the first six months of arriving in Australia. According to industry watchers, this was a common route used by agents to allow students to bypass Australian immigration laws to work in Australia.
New commitments announced in December also included higher language requirements for international students and “more scrutiny” of high-risk student visa applications.
The Australian Financial Review (AFR) reported on 30 January, quoting Craig Mackey, director of corporate development at IDP Education Australia, an international education company offering student placement in Australia, that in just four months between June and September, student visa approvals for students from India fell from 73% to 42%, Pakistan from 64% to 30%, Philippines from 81% to 36%, and Nigeria from 71 to 29%.
However, approval rates for countries such as China, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan were at 90% or higher due to financial capacity and genuineness of intention to study.
While better known universities are expected to reap the benefits of record interest in study from overseas students for 2024, as AFR notes, high visa refusal rates will have a devastating impact on private colleges which teach only international students in both the higher education and vocational sectors. This could also reduce the number of people coming into the country on student visas.
“International education is a key national asset – it is the biggest export we don’t dig out of the ground. That’s why strengthening the integrity of our international education sector is so important,” said Education Minister Jason Clare on 11 December last year.
“The Albanese Government’s Migration Strategy sends a clear message that we will act to prevent the exploitation of students and protect Australia’s reputation as a high-quality international education provider,” Clare said.
