“This Bill has few friends:” What was said at the intl student cap hearing

University stakeholders on Tuesday spoke overwhelmingly in unison to oppose the international student cap legislation that is currently before Parliament, saying the legislation, if passed, might cost the sector 14,000 jobs, or 10 per cent of its workforce. The Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024 proposes a limit to international student numbers, including a hard cap on how many international students can study at each university, in each course. Universities Australia (UA) said "everything about the bill was rushed." The original two days of hearings were reduced to one, and sector bodies were given a limited amount of time to speak. "The ... Bill, for the most part, is rushed policy," UA chief executive Luke Sheehy told the Education and Employment Legislation Committee. "Universities Australia supports the government’s intention to maintain the integrity and sustainability of the international education sector. "But we believe the Bill, as drafted, is more a political smokescreen than an instrument for good policy as the government seeks to gain an upper hand in a battle over migration ahead of the next election." The argument that the current Labor government is using international students as a scapegoat for cost-of-living pressures, specifically the rental and housing crisis, is a common one made by those who oppose the Bill. "Our main issue lies with the amendments that seek to control the number of international students our universities can enrol and what courses they can enrol in," Mr Sheehy said. "This is ministerial overreach to an extent we have never seen before. "The danger of using these talented people as scapegoats to blame the housing crisis on is what we stand to lose by telling them to stay home." UA and other bodies pointed to data that says international students are not significantly contributing to the rental crisis in cities, and that supply is still the overarching issue. Mr Sheehy later told ABC Afternoon Briefing universities are looking to build more fit-for-purpose student housing, a sentiment recently echoed by University of Sydney vice-chancellor Mark Scott, who called on the NSW government to remove "red tape" in the way of building the new accommodation. "It takes a long time for universities to recover from a big global shock like the pandemic. Ironically, some of our universities have actually had to sell their housing stock to keep their budget afloat," he said. "We're coming from a long way behind, and we're working hard to ensure that there is a pipeline, but that takes a long time. "It takes nearly five years to get housing stock from whoa to go and there are big impediments in the way, including the supply of capital in our own sector and, of course, state government and other regulatory barriers that are preventing us from getting those online quicker than we'd like to." Under the new bill universities are able to negotiate a higher cap if they build more student housing. The bill comes after the Labor government labelled Australia's migration system "broken," and cited 'shonky operators', mainly small, private colleges that were exploiting international students. Students were also said to be coming to Australia and 'visa hopping', continually applying for new courses so they wouldn't have to go home to start working, or become a skilled worker here. Clare O'Neil, who was home affairs minister at the time, slowed down the processing of student visas from December 2023. Since then, visa grants in higher education are down 23 per cent, or 59,410 students. UA claims that one international student pays for four university staff, so the slowing of visas in December itself means up to 14,000 jobs are at risk of being currently underfunded, about 10.7 per cent of the current national university workforce. National Tertiary Education Union president Alison Barnes told the hearing that amount of job cuts is not an option. “Threatening to slash 10 per cent of the university workforce as a bargaining tool against the federal government is a cruel and callous way to treat staff,’’ she said. “It is absolutely outrageous for the vice-chancellors lobby group to be threatening the jobs of 14,000 academic and professional staff who are an indispensable part of our higher education system. “Uncertainty around these changes have created a vacuum allowing opportunistic vice-chancellors to put job losses on the table.’’ Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA) deputy chief executive Felix Pirie said the independent faction of higher education, which has been hit the hardest by the restrictions, is already rolling out staff redundancies. Chief executive of the Regional Universities Network Alec Webb said this Bill would have just as much of a negative impact on regional universities as it would on more research-intensive city campuses. "The Regional Universities Network cannot support the introduction of caps targeting Australia’s high quality, low risk universities and public vocational education providers," he told the Committee. "This Bill, if unchanged, will have profound consequences for regional universities. Regional Australians welcome international students for the vibrant social, cultural, and economic contributions they make to our communities. "International students and graduates who settle in regional communities play an important role in addressing key skill shortages, and boosting global perspectives within regional classrooms and workforces." Mr Webb said many international students he has interacted with take their positive education experience back home with them. The Albanese government in July doubled the non-refundable student visa fee, making Australia the most expensive country to study in in the English-speaking world. "For some international students, the non-refundable visa fee is now more expensive than their course, with the outcome of their visa assessment becoming a casino-like gamble," he said. "Competitor nations offer far more certainty at a far lower price, exposing Australia as a high-risk study proposition. "Combined, these policy decisions are ill conceived, poorly implemented, and will result in ongoingdamage to Australia." The RUN leader proposed that 'high-quality, low risk' tertiary education providers, such as large, public universities, should be exempt from a cap. He also said regional university courses should be exempt from any type of domestic student cap, or that those limits should be set above pre-Covid enrolment numbers, and that should be set by "mission-based compacts by an apolitical entity – not the minister of the day." Mr Webb added that since 80 per cent of international students return home after graduating, the ability that a minister could suspend or cancel course offerings deemed outside of Australia’s skills needs should be removed. Group of Eight chief executive Vicki Thomson said the group is interested in reforming Australia's international education system, but a cap is not the way to do that. "Migration is shaping up as a key battlefront in the lead-up to the federal election and the university sector is shaping up to be the fall guy – unfairly and unjustifiably so," she said. "This rushed and poorly framed legislation is a classic example of retrofitting policy to suit dubious politics. "The rationale for capping international student numbers chops and changes as each excuse is discredited whether it’s the housing crisis, cost of living, rental availability, rental affordability, redistribution of students to regional areas, or the removal of ‘shonks’, ‘crooks’ and ‘dodgy providers’ from the system. " "This Bill, not surprisingly, has few friends." Ms Thomson told the Committee that Go8 member universities have 4252 courses registered on the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students (CRICOS). "The proposed legislation says the minister may determine a total enrolment limit and a course enrolment limit – two possible caps for the institution and each course. So, across the Go8 there is the possibility of over 8500 different caps," she said. "Which minister could justify this level of command-and-control, let alone the administrative burden of determining caps for, in our case, in excess of 4000 courses? It simply beggars belief." She said the Go8 supports a general overhaul of the country's student visa and migration system, just not one that will limit international students. Monash University, which was called on to speak and was represented by its vice-chancellor Sharon Pickering, said the cap would negatively impact the university's international education connections. "Monash University was born and bred in the southeast suburbs of Melbourne. Many of our first students in 1961 were the children of migrants, and the first in their family to go to university," Professor Pickering told the Committee. "About 10 per cent of the foundation cohort were from overseas, arriving from Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Monash has become Australia’s university of the Indo-Pacific, with campuses in Malaysia and Indonesia and presences in India and China – these could not have been established nor will they thrive without international education. They are critical for Australia’s influence in our region and are some of the greatest examples of Australian soft diplomacy." The university also said international student fees pay for its otherwise underfunded research capabilities, which include searching for treatment or a cure to multiple diseases. The University of Melbourne made similar statements.