The federal government has announced the number of international students starting at Australian universities and vocational training providers will be capped at 270,000 from next year.
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00:00Universities, the latest battleground of a major political stoush.
00:11The overall number of international students starting a course next year will be set at
00:15270,000.
00:16I think that that's not right.
00:20I think it's really concerning.
00:21This is bad policy.
00:23It's bad for Victoria.
00:25The Federal Government's plan to cap Victoria's most lucrative commodity, the international
00:29student, hasn't gone down well in the so-called education state.
00:34Imagine the Australian Government announcing a cap on iron ore exports.
00:38Imagine what an outcry there would be.
00:41Not since Scott Morrison basically told international students to go home could we have come up
00:47with a more fundamentally destructive decision.
00:52The state's richest education institution, Melbourne University, boasts that about a quarter
00:57of its students hold international visas.
00:59I've come here to speak to its Deputy Vice-Chancellor for Global Engagement, Professor Michael Wesley.
01:05Hi, Ross.
01:06Michael.
01:07Good to see you.
01:08Good to see you too.
01:09Professor Michael Wesley, welcome to Stateline.
01:11The Federal Government has announced a cap on New Start international students.
01:15What will that mean for Melbourne University?
01:18Well we're still working through the detail of what it means.
01:22The cap that we've been given takes a little bit of working through.
01:26Will that mean job cuts, perhaps even cuts to entire faculties as a result of this?
01:31Look, very hard to tell at this stage.
01:34Again, we're working through what it all means.
01:36We're doing modelling at the moment, but until we have complete certainty on what that number
01:41means and what it means in terms of our trajectory of finances over the last couple of years,
01:49we're not quite sure.
01:51The Government's rationale for the caps is to make it fairer for smaller universities
01:56in the regions.
01:57These reforms are designed to make it better and fairer and set it up on a more sustainable
02:02footing going forward.
02:04The Education Minister Jason Clare says this is about making it fairer for regional universities.
02:10Isn't that the case?
02:12Isn't the structure of this cap designed to help regional universities?
02:17That's the way it's designed.
02:18I'm not sure it's going to work that way.
02:21Friends that I have who work at regional universities are really in despair because the visa slowdown
02:29that was announced earlier this year has really meant that the number of visas granted to
02:35students wanting to study at Australia's regional universities has plummeted.
02:41That means that it's really destroyed the pipeline of students coming in to those universities.
02:46What that means in practice is that even though they've been given relatively high caps, they
02:52are very pessimistic that they'll actually be able to get anywhere near those caps.
02:59And then there's the question of housing and whether a drop in international students will
03:03result in a rise in inner city housing stock.
03:06Well we really don't know because we don't know what the impact of these numbers will
03:10be on the housing market.
03:13I'm not a specialist on the economics of housing but from what experts that I've been listening
03:18to and talking to have said is that this will have at best an extremely marginal impact
03:26on the availability of accommodation, on the cost of accommodation, on the cost of living.
03:33I have friends from overseas who are already considering going to other destinations which
03:39are slightly more welcoming.
03:41What is the demand like now compared to previous years from international students?
03:47We're seeing real weakening of demand.
03:50I think the uncertainty that's been brought on by the slowing of visa processing, the
03:56increase in the visa application fee to the most expensive fee in the English speaking
04:01world and the prospect of caps has sent enormous uncertainty into international student populations
04:10overseas and it's really made them start to think twice about applying to an Australian
04:16university.
04:18We know how this looks because the Canadians have done this, all of this, 12 months before
04:23we did and the Canadian university system is in real trouble.
04:28The Premier heads to India next week.
04:31Victoria's largest source of international students are from India.
04:35You can understand why I'm proud to be making my first trip as Premier in a few weeks' time
04:40to India.
04:42And her sell may have just become a little harder.
04:45One of the biggest international student markets is of course India.
04:48The Premier is going there at the end of next week.
04:50What do you hope comes from that trip?
04:53It sends a very clear signal that Victoria takes its relationship with India very, very
05:01seriously.
05:03It's important for the education sector because she will be a very senior political leader
05:08from Australia going to India at this time of uncertainty and saying Victoria is still
05:15open for business.
05:17We are still open, we are still welcoming of international students.
05:21We have the largest Indian diaspora population in the world.
05:25We're very welcoming to people of Indian background and people who are Indian citizens.
05:30I think she will be an enormously positive message and signal to send.
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