People are angry about Labor’s plan to cap international students at 270,000 in 2025, saying that such drastic cuts will hurt universities. And I share their anger, not because these cuts will hurt universities, but because these cuts don’t go far enough.
Firstly, the tricky thing about Labor’s messaging is that these cuts aren’t really cuts, they’re actually just slight reductions in growth. So the numbers are still growing, just not as quickly. Which is kind of like saying your house is on fire, just burning slower.
This move, announced on Tuesday, means that on top of the nearly 800,000 international students residing in the country right now, we’ll be adding another almost 300,000 to that population – minus those leaving (if many ever do leave).
The result will be that roughly 1 in 30 people in the country will be an international student. Already, Australia has more international students than Britain does, despite them having more than double our population. In fact – we have almost as much as the USA – despite the US having 305 million more people than us.
How is it that Australia came to house 12 per cent of the world’s international student population? Well, after giving up our manufacturing base, and aside from digging up rocks and shipping them overseas, we don’t have much of an economy. So that old saying that Australia’s economy relies on ‘holes and houses’ betrays the fact that large parts of our economy is now completely dependent on international students coming here to ignore group assignments.
But actually, the idea international students contribute to our economy might be misinformation. As Matt Barrie of Freelancer fame points out, remittances from migrants sending money back to their home countries totals $12.7 billion, with its growth tracking closely with student visas. So much of the money gained from bringing people here is largely sent overseas anyway. Good thing we have such good universities in Australia, to figure out that this simple equation is bad for us.
No, these caps, cuts, or minor reductions won’t solve anything, and they won’t be ‘worse than Covid’ – back then, when the borders were closed and lots of people went home, we actually had rent reductions and wage increases. It’s worth remembering that what was a tough time for universities and big businesses, was actually a boom time for workers, families, and young people, who enjoyed quieter streets, less competition for jobs and rentals, and in general a bit of a breather.
Remember that next time a Vice Chancellor earning more than the Prime Minister comes crying that student caps will ‘hurt universities’, and remind them that people are going homeless, wages are flat, and rentals are near impossible to find. And any argument that universities need foreign student money to survive really only shows that maybe the business model is broken. Australia had better universities, with better results and better student experiences before international students were even a thing.
The tide is well and truly turning. At Migration Watch Australia, we commissioned some polling and found that 68 per cent of Australians are in favour of reducing foreign student numbers to match those closer to the US per capita. This would put our total numbers down in the tens of thousands, not the hundreds of thousands we have now.
And unlike Labor’s weak caps this week, doing so would actually help fix things. Maybe somebody should study that.
Jordan Knight is founder of Migration Watch Australia and Director at the National Conservative Institute of Australia