Just when you thought the Albanian government couldn’t come up with new and clever ways to impose more bad policies on the nation, Education Minister Jason Clare walks into the room.
He has come up with the not-so-brilliant idea of imposing a cap on the number of foreign students who can enroll in Australia’s top universities. In other words, he is reducing the number of foreign students who can enroll in Australia’s top higher education institutions, so that lower-tier institutions can increase their numbers.
The reason Labour is doing this is because its previous policy of cracking down on international students across the sector resulted in fewer international students enrolling in lower-tier institutions rather than top-tier ones.
As a result, the bottom end of the sector was brought to its knees, causing Labour all sorts of political headaches in marginal constituencies and regional areas, where many of these struggling institutions are located.
Don’t take my word for it. Clare said these lower-level institutions have been “haemorrhaging” because of his “ministerial direction”.
By the way, this is not a surprising result. The group of experts that constitutes this government should have foreseen it.
If fewer foreign students are allowed into the country but the number is not limited on an institution-by-institution basis, the top universities will naturally win and the lower end of the market will collapse.
It’s common sense.
Education Minister Jason Clare has announced a cap on international students attending Australia’s top universities.
There is a perception that all international students who come here (and we welcome hundreds of thousands every year) want to become Australian citizens, but that is not the case – at least not the majority of international students studying at elite universities.
That is exactly what happened. An unintended consequence, but one that a good government and a good minister should have foreseen. In fact, a mediocre government and a mediocre minister should have foreseen it as well.
The only description that can be given is that Labour is groping in the dark for a new policy that will undo the damage it has already done.
However, what has emerged is even worse and does not solve the political problem that the initial policy was intended to address.
So why did Labour want to reduce the number of foreign students? To anyone who knows anything about higher education, this would seem like nonsense, since foreign students fund our universities.
For years, Australian governments have allowed funding levels for our universities to decline. Compared to similarly-ranked overseas institutions and compared to per capita funding nationally in previous years, funding has declined.
Universities have made up for this shortcoming (while maintaining high international rankings for a mid-sized nation like Australia) by attracting full-tuition paying international students.
They have funded our quality institutions, not the government, which has allowed governments of both parties to get away with funding a quality higher education sector.
The public probably won’t care, given the perception that universities are bastions of inner-city progressive activist ideology.
Sometimes this is the case, but not always. For example, there is a lot of this in the arts and social sciences faculties of some institutions, but much less in faculties such as engineering, business administration and medicine.
And let’s face it, these are mostly well-regarded colleges that enhance the reputation of Australia’s international higher education.
The Labour Party, in its infinite wisdom, is killing that goose that lays the golden eggs with its goose of a policy change it has just announced.
The political problem facing the Labor Party soon after coming to power was concern about mass immigration making it difficult for many Australians to afford housing. The perception is that large numbers of foreign students contribute to this.
But that’s not really the case, at least not for students attending top-tier institutions, which are now seeing their numbers shrink.
International students studying in Australia gain access to a visa upon completion of their studies and with it a pathway to citizenship. This is obviously a huge draw for many people living in other parts of the world that are not as wealthy or aesthetically appealing as Australia.
So the perception is that every overseas student who comes here (and we get hundreds of thousands every year) wants to become an Australian citizen.
But they don’t, at least not the majority of foreign students studying at elite universities.
Less than seven per cent of international students studying at top universities want to stay in Australia after completing their studies. They want to return home with a quality degree.
However, at lower-level institutions (which now retain larger numbers of students thanks to Clare’s policy of preventing leakage) that is not the case.
A much larger percentage of these students stay here. And those are the institutions that Clare’s policy change will allow to enroll more students, not fewer, and precisely the ones that are most likely to migrate.
Which is not surprising. These students are not attracted by the poor quality of the institutions they attend, but by the path to citizenship that their enrollment offers them.
Where does all this lead us? The Labour Party had a policy of restricting the number of foreign students at lower-level institutions, where such students were more likely to take advantage of immigration pathways that contributed to population growth, putting pressure on housing. But that is no longer the case.
Previously, top-tier universities could fund their high rankings with a large cohort of foreign students (and one that does not contribute much to immigration figures, as illustrated).
But the Labour Party, in its infinite wisdom, is killing that goose that lays the golden eggs with its newly announced policy change.
This will result in job losses and funding shortfalls at our top universities, which in turn will cause their rankings to fall. And they will likely have to reduce the number of domestic students to cover the cost of losing full-fee paying international students.
This is a very serious policy change.
So let’s give a slow clap to Labor for finding new and ingenious ways to damage the Australian economy and higher education, which until now has been our second largest export industry after mining.
Oh, and the Treasury didn’t even model the economic impact this policy change will have on the economy.
You really couldn’t come up with this level of political stupidity if you tried.