Australia international students cap: College closure, job losses imminent

After the cap on international students was announced in Australia, the vocational education (VET) sectors received a limit of 95,000. The experts are predicting that job losses in the sector are imminent.

Study in Australia: Ever since the Australian government announced a cap on international student enrolment, there has been a whole debate going on in the sector on how it will impact the finances, jobs and colleges in Australia.

As per the report of ICEF Monitor, Troy Williams, the chief executive of the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA) said that college closures and job losses are imminent.

“College closures are now inevitable, and ITECA members lay the blame squarely at the feet of Australian Government politicians responsible for international education policy," said Troy Williams.

He estimated that up to 300 independent colleges will close. “Their employees will lose their jobs, as will other employees in colleges that will have to scale down to survive …. There is a widespread and chilling belief within the ITECA membership that Australian Government politicians simply do not care about the livelihoods they are destroying," said Troy Williams.

VET sector expected to be devastated by cap

Initially, the government announced that the vocational education (VET) sectors would have a cap of 95,000 compared to 30,000 for other universities and non-university providers, and 145,000 for public universities. Last Friday, the government released how many spaces they would receive out of the total cap. As per the report, many of the VET providers will be devastated and many will get less than half of new foreign student enrolments as compared to last year.

Claire Field of Claire Field & Associates said, “The reason why the caps are so damaging to VET providers is that in VET ‘new students’ are almost the same as ‘total’ students in any given year because many VET courses are only ~12 months long.”

Ms Field observed the devastation as “a senior executive was admitted to hospital following a nervous breakdown – after their institute was given a cap which is just 15% of their normal student numbers (i.e., their approved CRICOS capacity).”

Claire Field & Associates is a firm that supports institutes in Australia across the tertiary education sector.

Read more:

• Australia implements cap on international students enrolment for 2025
• Australia sets cap of 145,000 on new international students for public universities in 2025