This article is adapted from a presentation delivered at the Australian International Education Conference (AIEC) 2025.
International education and immigration are two halves of one system, but in Australia, they have drifted dangerously out of alignment. The result is a confused, reactive, and increasingly exclusionary environment that undermines student wellbeing, institutional stability, and Australia’s reputation as a fair and welcoming nation.
If we want international education to deliver on its potential – fostering opportunity, innovation, and connection, we must rebuild the bridge between education and immigration and design a system that is both sustainable and inclusive.
The State of the Sector: A System Out of Sync
International students contribute around $50 billion annually to the Australian economy. Yet in public and political discourse, they are often blamed for the pressures facing housing, transport, and health systems, echoes of the same rhetoric used to scapegoat migrants more broadly. In recent years, a series of rapid policy shifts have compounded uncertainty:
- Student visa fees have nearly tripled (from $710 to $2,000), framed as an “integrity measure.”
- Multiple ministerial directions have introduced quasi-caps on student numbers.
- The Genuine Student Test was introduced in 2024, assessing applicants’ intentions and motivations.
- Around 40,000 visa appeals are now waiting to be heard by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
- ELICOS enrolments have dropped sharply, refusal rates have risen, and providers are closing.
Meanwhile, public investment in universities has fallen from 0.9% of GDP to 0.6% over the past three decades, even as student numbers have tripled, leaving universities reliant on international revenue simply to stay afloat.
At times, it’s tempting to describe this as a broken system. But I don’t believe it’s broken, I believe it’s confused, shaped by decades of fragmented decisions made in isolation across immigration and education policy. The result is a system that lurches between “open the doors” and “shut the doors,” leaving students, providers, and employers in limbo.
When Integrity Becomes Exclusion
The introduction of so-called “integrity measures”, from visa fee hikes to stricter work rights, has become one of the defining features of the post-COVID international education landscape. But many of these measures risk creating new inequities rather than solving existing ones.
The Genuine Student Test, for example, requires assessors to judge an applicant’s “intentions.” This opens the door to inconsistency, unconscious bias, and discrimination. It also avoids a truth everyone in the sector knows: many students work to pay their fees, and many hope to stay in Australia longer term. That doesn’t make them “non-genuine”, it makes them pragmatic, ambitious, and human.
Likewise, visa fee increases don’t measure applicant “quality.” They measure financial capacity, further entrenching inequality.
The Vicious Cycle
Because education and migration policy are so poorly aligned, universities are trapped in a vicious cycle:
- Universities rely heavily on international student revenue.
- Policy uncertainty and restriction increase.
- Student outcomes and wellbeing decline.
- Political backlash grows.
- Policy tightens further
… and the cycle repeats.
The consequences are clear: instability for students, reputational risk for universities, and confusion for employers. No single government, department, or institution is to blame; this is a system that has evolved reactively, without a coherent national vision for what we want international education and migration to achieve, individually or together.
A Reframing: From “Problem” to Potential
The Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) International Student Pathways and Outcomes Study released recently offers a more constructive frame. Rather than positioning international education as a problem, it identifies its potential as a key contributor to Australia’s skills and workforce needs.
Key insights include:
- Around half of higher education visa holders who began their studies in 2010/2011 remained in Australia 10 years after arrival, around 45% as permanent residents, and the other 5% on temporary visas – far more than the oft-quoted “80% go home” figure.
- Many graduates, especially from the VET sector, are already working in occupations aligned with their qualifications.
- Yet barriers to employment remain, including limited access to industry experience, visa restrictions, employer bias, and unpaid placements.
The JSA report makes a series of powerful recommendations, no more so than recommendation 1, which states:
Develop a shared set of objectives for Australia’s international education sector, which should include its contribution to Australia’s total economic activity and its contribution to building Australia’s skilled workforce over the medium to long term.
This will requirement alignment visa settings with skills needs.
What Universities Can Do
Universities have a crucial role in building this bridge. Four actions stand out:
- Transparency in recruitment, ensuring students understand course outcomes, post-study options, and the realities of studying in Australia. (Of course, this can’t be done effectively by institutions if visa conditions keep changing)
- Embedding robust student support, across housing, English language development, work rights, and mental health.
- Aligning courses with national skills priorities, connecting learning to clear employment pathways in fields where Australia faces shortages.
- Advocating for fairer public funding, so that universities are not forced into unsustainable dependence on international enrolments.
Without adequate base funding, universities cannot deliver high-quality education or
meaningful inclusion for all students, domestic or international.
What Government Can Do
Governments, have the integral role in building a coherent system.
- Integrate immigration, housing, workforce, and education planning. Policy in one domain cannot keep undermining the others.
- Properly resource visa processing and tribunals. The 40,000-case backlog undermines confidence and leaves students in limbo. This must be cleared before it continues to grow.
- Replace the ‘genuine student’ test with transparent, evidence-based criteria.
- Align post-study work and visa opportunities with national skills priorities.
These steps would reduce instability, strengthen trust, and create clear pathways from study to meaningful work and contribution.
Building the Bridge Together
The most promising opportunities will emerge when government and universities work collaboratively. Together, they can:
- Strengthen alumni networks to advance Australia’s global engagement and soft diplomacy.
- Improve English and employability support from arrival to graduation, including paid placements and integrated career pathways.
- Ensure post-study visa pathways are clear, fair, and aligned with workforce needs.
International students are not temporary guests. They are future colleagues, innovators, neighbours, and citizens. Seeing them as such unlocks enormous potential, for Australia and for the world.
The Risk of Doing Nothing
The consequences of inaction are already visible:
- Rising asylum and humanitarian applications.
- Political scapegoating of students.
- Collapse in sub-sectors like ELICOS and VET.
- Declining global reputation.
- Universities perceived as mercenary rather than mission driven.
But the deepest risk is human. Systems that lose sight of the people within them eventually fracture. The misalignment between education and immigration policy is not just bureaucratic inefficiency, it is a failure of care.
We can do better. By aligning policy, resourcing, and purpose, we can design a system that sees international students not as visa categories or economic units, but as people – as future Australians, global citizens, and partners in our shared global future.
Cate Gilpin is coordinator of Welcoming Universities, a network that aims to build inclusion and belonging in the higher education sector.
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