A late policy crackdown hasn’t stopped public universities from fuelling a fresh wave of overseas student arrivals — and Australia’s migration numbers are set to rise again, writes Dr Abul Rizvi.
At the end of Covid, the Coalition Government stomped its foot on the immigration accelerator, particularly in terms of student visas. The new Labor Government belatedly tightened policy from the second half of 2023 and continued to do so until recent months.
In August and September, we are starting to see the impact of policy loosening. But how far will that shift take us and what are the implications for immigration policy overall?
As a result of the COVID era policy loosening, new offshore student applications in 2022 hit an all-time record of 361,571. That was around 65,000 more than the pre-COVID record. In 2023, that was exceeded by a new record of 444,538 offshore student applications. That was the primary driver of the net migration boom in 2022-23 and 2023-24.
Despite policy tightening starting in the second half of 2023, it was not until 2024 that offshore student applications started to fall. Offshore student applications in 2024 were 288,314, with offshore applications in every month of 2024 being lower than in the corresponding months of 2023.
That trend continued into the first half of 2025, when student applications in every month of 2025 were lower than the equivalent month of 2024.
That was the case until August 2025, when offshore student applications marginally exceeded the level in August 2024. In September 2025, offshore student applications were 19,795 compared to 14,963 in September 2024.
The change is predominantly the function of public universities being well behind their notional allocation of places in 2025, provided by the Education Department (private higher education providers were well ahead of their allocations, while VET providers were well behind).
It would appear the Education Department has encouraged public universities to ramp up their recruitment, particularly from source nations other than China (there has been no such encouragement of VET providers).
There has been a marked resurgence of offshore student applications from India and Nepal, as well as ongoing strengthening out of Bangladesh. Refusal rates for offshore student applications from the second half of 2023 and all through 2024 that were particularly ramped up have now been eased.
Public universities will be expecting the moderation of refusal rates in 2025 to continue and indeed reduce further. They have been encouraged to think this way by the increased student planning level for 2026 and the placement of almost every public university in the low-risk category for evidentiary requirements.
Against that background, it is likely offshore student applications in October, November and December of 2025 will significantly exceed those in the same months of 2024. These are less likely to exceed the levels in 2023 as policy on offshore VET and English language intensive courses for overseas students (ELICOS) visas remains tight.
The VET and ELICOS sectors took significant advantage of looser policy settings in 2022 and 2023 and are now facing significant financial pressures from the government-engineered downturn.
While these developments will make public universities very happy and get them off Education Minister Jason Clare’s back on their funding problems, the longer-term implication is that net migration will not fall as far as Treasury has been forecasting. And the flow-on pressures on the permanent Migration Program, with unprecedented backlogs, will continue to build.
It would appear the Government has no plans to manage that, as it does not have an overarching policy framework for managing net migration and the permanent migration program, nor is any minister prepared to take responsibility for that. Immigration Minister Tony Burke continues to make excuses for not developing a long-term policy framework for managing immigration.
The Coalition Shadow Immigration Minister, Paul Scarr, rightly criticises him for that but fails to commit to a long-term plan. Australians may need to live with the fact that neither side of politics wants to commit to a long-term plan for migration.
Dr Abul Rizvi is an Independent Australia columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul.
This article is republished from Independent Australia under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.
Header image: Students celebrate Diwali at the University of Melbourne last month.
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