Federal government must tread gently over university reforms

If the federal government is concerned with reducing the number of international student arrivals from its post-pandemic surge, opponents of the move have other numbers on their minds, from the billions of dollars flowing into university coffers which subsidise prestigious research programs, to the jobs created and filled by our international student cohort.

Some in the education sector have suggested that a government struggling to articulate its overall policy on migration amid a cost-of-living crisis has seized upon the international student intake as low-hanging fruit. To blame those we invited to study here for issues such as rising rents is both unfair and simplistic, given that rents rose during the pandemic too, in the students’ absence. Migration and housing are policy challenges with many facets, so cutting student numbers alone, or trying to direct the intake away from metropolitan centres, is unlikely to substantially address either of them in the long term.

At the top end of the tertiary sector – the Group of Eight universities – the caps have been described as “arbitrary” and “staggering”. These universities have lamented a lack of consultation and the absence of plans to address the issues of funding teaching and research.

They have also forecast that attempts by the government to engineer where students choose to study will put at risk the entire $48 billion industry – by federal Education Minister Jason Clare’s own assessment, the “biggest export we don’t dig out of the ground”.

Elsewhere, the perspective is not nearly so bleak. Universities outside the Group of Eight see an opportunity in Clare’s stated intention of redistributing enrolments to regional institutions.

The challenge for the government’s policy on enrolments is clear: can it make a wider array of universities appealing in the international marketplace and lift all boats? At the Australian National University, higher education expert Professor Andrew Norton was dismissive: “The whole idea that a Chinese student who wants to go to the University of Sydney will instead go to Southern Cross University is completely unrealistic. They simply won’t come to Australia.”

Beating this logic will require the federal government to send a clearer signal of the value it puts on the contribution and skills of international students, and indeed those from their ranks who choose to make this country their home.

That, in turn, means Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his ministers have to spell out and champion a long-term vision around Australia’s immigration.

Both these agenda items are part of a larger economic narrative, one in which the role of an educated Australian workforce remains crucial. Not only does the federal government have to contend with continued opposition scrutiny over immigration, but at the same time Labor state governments are urging it to reconsider the caps.

Beating corruption in the sector, evening out the playing field and keeping Australian universities competitive against international rivals are all objectives worthy of our support. But the real-world consequences are serious, and deserve to be taken more seriously by the federal government.

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