Far more international students end up staying in Australia than previously thought, according to a new government report that estimated about 40% end up gaining permanent residency
The Jobs and Skills Australia (JSA) study on the education sector, released last month, found that 70% of foreign students in higher education said migration was a key factor in choosing to study in Australia, and that of those who started studying in the 2010s, 35-40% are now permanent residents.
This number is more than double a 2018 Treasury and Department of Home Affairs estimate of 16%, and JSA noted that analysis of a subset of Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed that for countries other than China the number who achieved permanent residency was about 55%.
International students trying to avoid returning to their home countries has also resulted in a bridging visa blow-out, with 400,000 issued for the first time in August, according to the latest Home Affairs data, and tribunal appeals of student visa rejections have more than quadrupled since 2020.
The JSA report found that international students have become “an important pipeline to the permanent skilled visa program”, and that study was often seen as a “lower-barrier pathway to business ownership than dedicated business and investment visas”.
For students from India and Nepal, 77% and 79% respectively cited a possibility to migrate being a reason for choosing to study in Australia, and the intention to seek PR was noted by international graduates and providers who took part in JSA’s research.
A nursing graduate said in an interview that they chose their field after checking a list and deciding “it’s something that I probably could do compared to other occupations”.
One internship provider said “all they care about is the PR”, and reported her students saying when she was trying to place them: “Make it something simple and easy because I’ll never work in this discipline.”
An employer in the engineering field said a worker told him that international students using education as a pathway to business ownership was commonplace.
“He told me a lot of his mates just come here to earn the money, drive the Uber. Some of them are looking to buy businesses. It’s quite common that they’re looking for things like laundromats and car washes and so on, and the only way they can get in is to enrol in education,” he said.
Finance presenter Alan Kohler referred to the number in a column for the ABC last week where he warned that mass immigration was “the big boost” to underlying demand driving the rise in house prices.
“For the past three years, Treasury predicted that total migration would be 810,000 but it turned out to be 1.4 million,” he wrote.
“One problem seems to be that Treasury has no idea how many foreign students end up getting permanent residency. Their model assumes 16%, but in a report released last week, Jobs and Skills Australia estimated that it’s actually 35–40%.”
According to the latest Education Department data the number of international students studying in Australia totalled 791,146 for the January-July 2025 period, a 0% increase on last year’s figures. 180,451 were from China, followed by 136,312 from India, and 64,825 from Nepal.
Header image: Left, a foreign student graduates from the University of Sydney (USU). Right, international students at the University of Melbourne (UMSU).
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