Under severe housing pressure, the Australian government wants to limit the number of foreign students from next year. Will such measures work? DW spoke to experts and Chinese students about how the policy has affected the willingness of Chinese students to study at Australia's top universities.

The Australian government announced on Tuesday that it would cap the number of new international students enrolled at 270,000 from 2025. Although it still needs to be approved by the Australian Parliament, Australian higher education institutions rely heavily on international students, particularly from Asia, so the new policy has sparked a backlash.

Experts point out that this will affect the chances of Chinese students entering Australian universities, and even further change the willingness of Chinese students to study in Australia.

Under the new rules, the maximum number of international students enrolled in Australian universities in 2025 will be set at 145,000, about the level of 2023; The number of international students enrolled in vocational training courses is capped at 95,000. The Australian government wants to rein in immigration, which it says is causing rents to soar.

Australian universities are the most affected

Education revenue from international students is Australia's fourth largest "export" industry after coal, iron ore and natural gas, generating an estimated $36.4 billion for the Australian economy in the 2022-2023 financial year.

According to the Australian Department of Education's 2022 data, while the degree to which universities rely on international students varies, at many of Australia's top institutions, international student fees are the largest source of income after government grants. The University of Sydney, for example, derives about 44 per cent of its income from international student fees; Monash University, the University of New South Wales and the University of Queensland also have more than 30 percent.

The "Group of Eight", a coalition of Australia's top universities with a long history and ranking, issued a public statement on the 27th that "firmly opposes" the cap on international student numbers, criticizing the move as "reckless". "It will harm the industry and the country," he said, in effect "punishing" universities that are popular with international students. The coalition called on the Senate "in the strongest possible terms" not to allow the government to pass the new policy.

Yu Tao, associate Professor of Chinese studies at the University of Western Australia (UWA), told DW that different universities may have different reactions to the Australian government's planned cap on the proportion of international students: "Those universities with a higher concentration of Chinese students, It is mainly the 'eight' universities with high international rankings - which may be affected in terms of enrollment in China."

"Universities that are located in remote parts of Australia or have relatively low global rankings may not be particularly affected," Tao said.

Andrew Norton, a professor at the Centre for Social Research and Methods at the Australian National University (ANU) who has long studied higher education policy, also told DW that Australian universities, which already have a high concentration of international students, will also face the worst decline in international student enrolment after 2025.

NORTON believes the likely impact in the future is that many of Australia's major research universities will receive less revenue from international students and have less money available for research than they did in the past when there was no cap on international student numbers.

NORTON also pointed out that the Australian government's new international student cap policy does not regulate international student quotas. However, he believes that "the cap policy will have the biggest impact on Chinese students".

Experts: Chinese students may be reluctant to take a lower salary

Chinese students will rank first among new students studying in Australia in 2024, according to the Australian Department of Education. Between January and May this year, more than 150,000 new students from China arrived in Australia, followed by students from India and Nepal.

According to a report in The Australian in May this year, driven by Chinese students, the number of overseas students enrolled in Australian universities in early 2024 has surpassed pre-COVID-19 levels, and almost all of these students choose to study in the "Big Eight universities". At the beginning of 2024, 86% of new Chinese students enrolled in Australia's "top eight universities", 15% higher than last year and 31% higher than in 2019.

The report also said that outside of the "Big Eight" universities, the number of Chinese students enrolled in early 2024 was half of what it was before the coronavirus outbreak.

Tao Yu Research, some relatively low-ranked Australian universities, may welcome the Australian government's new policy, because the restrictions may encourage some international students to choose to go to these lower-ranked schools.

From his personal observation, Tao Yu believes that international students from South Asian countries are relatively less "persistent" about university rankings, so it is indeed not ruled out that some international students who tend to find jobs and develop their careers in Australia may choose other Australian universities when they are unable to enter top Australian universities.

However, in Tao Yu's view, "Chinese students generally pay more attention to international rankings, and many of them are not so strong in looking for jobs or even emigrating to Australia after graduation." If the Australian government adopts a strict "one-size-fits-all" quota limit, Chinese students will not choose other Australian universities with poor rankings.

According to Tao Yu, Australian universities not only compete domestically, but more importantly internationally with other English-taught universities, especially those in the UK and Canada, as a source of international students. "If Chinese students can't get into the 'Big Eight' schools, they may not choose other lower-ranked universities in Australia and are more likely to go to similarly ranked universities in other countries."

In an article published on The Conversation, an Australian opinion exchange platform, NORTON pointed out that "very few students who want to attend a prestigious university, or want to live in a major city, go to a low-prestige university or regional university". So when students are faced with a cap on places in Australia, "they don't come to Australia".

In this case, NORTON also noted that "by the end of 2025, we may find that many universities and other educational institutions have not yet reached the cap, resulting in a total number of new students well below 270,000."

What do Chinese students think? Polls in Australia show voters are worried that a large influx of foreign students and workers will put too much pressure on the housing market. With less than a year to go before the Australian election, immigration is likely to be one of the hot issues in the campaign.

To stem the influx, the government last month more than doubled visa fees for foreign students and plans to change rules that will no longer allow graduates to extend their stay in Australia.

Zhang Pute, a Chinese master's student at the Australian National University, told DW that the Australian government ostensibly believes that limiting the number of foreign students can improve Australia's housing crisis, but in fact the problem "has not really been solved."

He believes the Australian government intends to limit the number of new students in 2025 to "basically the same" as during the coronavirus pandemic, not a particular reduction, "but that is when Australia's housing crisis began."

In the long run, he thinks the measure is overkill. Zhang said that the Australian government should increase visa requirements and limit foreign students to study in "pheasant schools", is the right approach, "(these management measures) will improve the quality of the entire industry in the long run, but simply limiting the number of students is harmful and no good."