AIEC 2024: Australia’s Policy Pains: A Crisis or Catalyst for Opportunity?
It feels that 2024 has been the year when international education collided head-on with domestic politics in three of the four largest destination markets for international students – Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. The biggest impact of all may yet be felt when we understand the full geopolitical ramifications unleashed by the second Trump presidency in the world’s most popular destination for foreign talent. All this takes place while the fundamentals driving outbound student mobility show no signs of letting up and where there is a danger that other drivers can get lost in domestically focused, policy navel-gazing. It certainly is a more nuanced and complex world.
It is against this backdrop, that the annual Australian International Education Conference taking its theme as the Human Element took place in Melbourne at the end of October. As a traditional powerhouse in international student mobility, the Australian conference is one of the highlights of the global international education calendar. And this year it attracted a record 1900 delegates. You can enjoy some of the highlights here.
Understanding the Australian Policy Context
This time felt different. Through the course of the year, the Australian international education sector has been grappling with the delayed amendment of the Education Services for Overseas Students (Quality and Integrity) 2024 Amendment. Broadly, the aim of the amendment is to manage inbound student flows after massive increases in the post-Covid years. There is a range of measures, but probably best grouped into these three areas:
- To manage the inflow of international students by setting institutional caps on the total number they are permitted to enroll;
- Restrict the number of colleges and providers licensed to enroll overseas students;
- To introduce greater regulation of agent activity – especially for those based within Australia – for example by prohibiting the ability for commission to be paid for students transferring from one course within Australia to another.
As if this weren’t enough, the Government introduced Ministerial Direction 107 – which, crudely, gives consular officials the autonomy to approve or deny study visas on the basis of estimated risk while waiting for the ESOS bill to be legislated. Many universities within Australia and agents in source countries have been extremely vocal in their opposition to this which they believe has unfairly discriminated against regional universities and students from emerging markets – such as South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Many of the plenary sessions focused on the policy challenges faced by Australia, Canada, and the UK. There’s a great summary here from Tracy Harris in the Koala News.
As we noted in our presentation to the conference, policy matters and news of this uncertainty do travel through key source markets. We saw this in the UK earlier this year and most notably in Canada. IDP’s Emerging Futures data and similar research from StudyPortals point to drops in demand for Australia directly linked to a negative narrative linked to enrolment caps – even though they haven’t been enacted yet.
A wider perspective– domestic policy is not the only variable in determining student flows
It sometimes feels that traditional destinations operate in a competitive echo chamber -where the predominant competitive focus is on the traditional destination countries and what they’re doing/experiencing. Much analysis tends to focus on the “big four” – the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. Important of course, but only one factor.
There is a very real danger that the focus on the domestic policy environment underplays the significance of other, more profound factors shaping student flows – affordability, a cost of living crunch – keenly felt in China, the rise in competing offers from alternative destinations, rising expectations of digitally native students and rapid growth from emerging economies amongst many others.
While Australia, Canada, and the UK consider their role in serving international students, developed European and Asian economies such as Japan, Korea, Germany, Finland, Malaysia, and others are dealing with profound demographic change, rapidly aging populations, and not enough domestic talent to fuel their economies. These countries are turning to international students to strategically plug those gaps – in many cases offering huge incentives in terms of lower tuition fees and generous post-study work rights. Global competition for foreign talent is intense.
TNE’s moment in the sun? – and Australia’s invitation to play a leading part
It feels like there’s a paradigm shift and the time has come to explore new ways of meeting demand. This is not lost on the Australian government who wheeled out Education Minister, Jason Clare to conference.
The Minister was clear in his speech that expanding Australia’s transnational education is a major priority. As he pointed out, international education is not a one-way street.
“It’s not just about students coming here. It’s also about us going to them. And we are also good at that. 10 Australian universities are doing this at the moment in 10 different countries.”
Some of the eye-watering facts shared by India’s Minister for Education, Dharmendra Pradhan, also invited to the conference, illustrate the scale of the challenge and the opportunity in India alone.
There are half a billion people under the age of 23 with one million young people turning 18 every month. By 2035, one in four people obtaining a degree anywhere in the world will do so in India.
That is just India – there are enormous education capacity gaps elsewhere across the world with burgeoning young populations and not enough high-quality provision to support them or the local labor markets. More than 40 percent of the Indonesian population is under 34 and 70 percent of sub-Saharan Africa is under the age of 30.
Minister Clare warmed to his theme, using his platform to promote Australian higher education offshore delivery.
“There are other ways we can help, like twinning degrees. Where you do two years in one country and two years here and get a degree in both. I know it is something Minister Pradhan is keen on", he said.
And with Western Australia, for example, within two hours of the same timezone as 60 percent of the world’s population, the opportunities for Australia to engage creatively to help meet demand is as compelling as it is essential.
Indeed, there was a TNE factsheet released by the Australian government, exempting large sections of Transnationally delivered education from student enrolment caps. In summary, students who complete at least 40 percent of their course with a partner institution offshore and no more than 60 percent in Australia and through a formal twinning program or dual degree will not be included in institutional caps on enrolment.
The Human Element – a focus on the real drivers of student demand
The overall conference theme was the Human Element – and plenaries, sessions, and speeches were all rich with individual stories of the transformative power of education.
- Abbas Nazari, a young Afghan refugee, denied entry to Australia who settled in New Zealand and went on to become a Fullbright Scholar and bestselling author,
- the Burmese and Cambodian high school students, sharing their experiences of living and learning in the cultural melting pot of Melbourne,
- the Australian-Vietnamese engineer and AI robotics engineer inspired to improve the lives of those with severe disability
It is this human element when building new propositions for students that will be key to the sustainable success of transnationally delivered programs. Whether they are delivered online or offline, delivered in Australia or offshore, the focus needs to remain squarely on delivering what students need and expect.
How does the curriculum support Return on Investment? Have price points and scholarships been calibrated to reflect local market conditions and ability to pay? Will dual degrees offer the possibility of gaining international work experience? Has the marketing been localized to resonate with a different type of delivery? Is governance in place to protect the quality of the education and student experience?
“The best way to predict your future is to create it”
The old adage, attributed to Abraham Lincoln feels like sage advice as we adjust to address new generations of student hope and aspiration. It is certainly driving our approach to supporting universities to meet exploding demand and why we are investing in the technologies, market presence, and delivery capabilities to open more opportunities for our partners and for the students we collectively serve.
Ultimately, it is aspiration and human ambition that drives international mobility. New opportunities open themselves to students, technological tools make education more accessible, and carefully designed partnerships open opportunities for Australian higher education to expand with confidence.
The potential for Australia to leverage its influence as a force for educational good inevitably means looking beyond its home campuses – as many have already been doing for decades. Is now the moment, to accelerate that reach and influence and to lead the world in offshore delivery in much the same way as it has led the world in welcoming students to its shores over the past four decades? It certainly feels that way.
Download INTO’s full conference presentation here.
INTO works in close collaboration with The University of Western Australia, supporting its international expansion. Learn more.