Australia has decided to limit the number of international students it can enroll
Sydney: Australia said on Tuesday that it will cap the number of foreign students it accepts for enrollment at 270,000 for the year 2025. This move comes as the government attempts to control record migration, which has driven up the cost of housing.
The decision is one of a series of steps taken since last year to remove COVID-era benefits for foreign workers and students in Australia, which aided local hiring while preventing foreign workers from entering the country due to stringent border restrictions.
Education Minister Jason Clare said at a news conference that “there are about 10% more international students in our universities today than before the pandemic and about 50% more in our private vocational and training providers.”
According to Clare, the changes are intended to improve and level the playing field for overseas students, which will put the industry on a more stable foundation moving ahead.
Australia’s biggest export sector is international education, which contributed A$36.4 billion to the country’s GDP in the 2022–2023 fiscal year.
However, surveys indicate that voters are worried about significant inflows of foreign workers and students placing undue strain on the property market, making immigration one of the likely primary battlegrounds in an election that will take place in less than a year.
In the year ending September 30, 2023, net immigration reached a record high of 548,800, up 60% from the 518,000 in the year ending June 2023.
Australia increased its yearly migration figures in 2022 to assist companies in hiring workers to cover staffing gaps after the COVID-19 epidemic, which imposed stringent border restrictions and prevented foreign workers and students from entering the country for over two years.
The unprecedented migration, which was fueled by students from the Philippines, China, and India, increased the labor supply and reduced wage pressure, but it also made the already tight housing market worse.
The government last month more than quadrupled the cost of a visa for international students and promised to eliminate loopholes that enabled them to constantly extend their stay in an effort to slow down the country’s immigration wave.
