What’s next for international education policy? Australia’s sector leaders weigh in

Days before the government announced its National Planning Level of 295,000 international student places for 2026, Luke Sheehy, CEO of Universities Australia spoke candidly about Australia’s de facto cap on international enrolments, telling delegates at The PIE’s Gold Coast conference that Australia has “caught the sniffles of the Canadian disease in terms of demand”.

Sheehy said the new overseas commencements (NOSC) limits, implemented through visa-processing directive Ministerial Direction 111, have “decimated” demand in parts of the sector, along with additional damage caused by the lingering impact of Ministerial Direction 107. He compared the situation to Canada, where government caps have sharply reduced student interest and left institutions struggling to meet numbers.

For Felix Pirie, CEO of Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA), one of the biggest challenges with Australia’s so-called “cap-not-cap” lies in perception.

“For businesses to work towards a system that isn’t a cap that is being enforced or managed as though it is a cap, that’s incredibly difficult for a business to manage, particularly with their offshore relationships when the perception offshore is that it’s in fact a cap,” said Pirie.

According to analysis seen by Pirie, the VET sector is on track to fall significantly short of its national planning target – likely reaching less than 50% of the planned level.

“If that is in fact the case, then we probably need to recalibrate the design of the system, the mechanisms we’re using to distribute and so forth, across all sectors, schools, English language, everywhere,” he said.

Although the schools sector is exempt from government-imposed NOSC limits, Simone Fuller, executive director at the Department of Education International, Queensland, explained that there is a knock-on effect. International students who have already invested significantly in their Australian education now face uncertainty around university placements. Fuller called for special consideration to be given to these students.

Elsewhere, sector leaders have been vocal about the impact of the government’s student visa fee hikes. However, Phil Honeywood, CEO of the International Education Association of Australia (IEAA), reiterated hopes that ongoing lobbying efforts will lead the government to reduce the recently increased AUD $2,000 student visa fee for specific cohorts of short-term students.

“The reality is that hiking visa fee is exorbitant for a student who’s going to come over here for experience for one term,” said Fuller.

“For us in Queensland, it’s about half of the tuition fee. While we won’t potentially see that impact now, that would come next year, we would like to see that fee reduced also for the study abroad market.”

With Labor re-elected and Julian Hill appointed assistant minister for international education (also covering home affairs, citizenship and multicultural affairs), panellists were optimistic about future sector‑government dialogue. Sheehy highlighted Hill’s unique role spanning both home affairs and education, while Honeywood called him an “absolute champion of international education”.

Time will tell whether we can advocate strongly enough that everybody gets their fair share of the pie, that we don’t discriminate against private providers, that we don’t kill off the crucial, stand-alone English language sector and that we support the skills sector as well
_{^{Phil Honeywood, IEAA}}

“He’s really the only federal politician we’ve had on the inside of politics who has worked in international education, so he totally gets it,” said Honeywood.

Despite this optimism, Honeywood warned that “time will tell whether we can advocate strongly enough that everybody gets their fair share of the pie, that we don’t discriminate against private providers, that we don’t kill off the crucial, stand-alone English language sector and that we support the skills sector as well”.

Hill addressed delegates via video message, with a clear call to action: the future of international education in Australia hinges on “a ruthless focus on quality and a great student experience – both of which are central to Australia’s value proposition and our global reputation”.

He outlined the government’s mission to “support genuine students and quality providers”, and reiterated its commitment to managing “the size and shape of the onshore student market and supporting sustainable growth”.

International student numbers are now “trending to sustainable levels”, he told the Gold Coast audience but said “further work remains to address issues of distribution, composition and integrity”.

Conversations at the Gold Coast conference turned to plans to ban onshore commission to stop international students switching from one course to another after the six-month window during which immediate course changes are prohibited. The theory is that agencies will refrain from “poaching” students if they can’t earn a commission for transferring the student.

Opinions differ on whether this will be sufficient to eliminate onshore poaching. However, Honeywood argued that there remains a “legitimate role” for some onshore commission – citing the example of a student progressing from an undergraduate degree to a master’s, who may feel that neither their current university nor their private higher education provider offers a suitable course.

Elsewhere, Sheehy said the universities sector has a big job to do to deliver on its domestic mission to make Australia “more prosperous, better skilled, more curious, and more capable to take on the opportunities and challenges of the next century”.

“International education, like it or not, has been the way that we have funded that expansion in research and teaching for Australia over the last four decades, ostensibly, particularly over the two decades. The work to get that right begins now,” he explained.

The Universities Australia CEO is optimistic about the recently launched interm Tertiary Education Commission. “If that is properly skilled, properly autonomous, and does really good work, we can work out a way to navigate how to get our sector back onto a growth trajectory, which is what the government wants,” he said.

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