Caps, curbs and crises

“What is a political problem has been turned into a migration problem, which has now been turned into an education problem. The absurdity of it is extraordinary.”

This analysis from Warwick McKibbin, distinguished professor of economics and public policy at Australian National University (ANU), no doubt captures the feelings of many in higher education about the way in which international education has found itself in the cross hairs.

It has come as a shock in particular for universities in Australia, which to an even greater extent than in other developed systems have built hard and fast on what were assumed to be the solid foundations of international student demand.

The demand is still largely solid, but the openness of countries including Australia, the UK and Canada to fully embracing it has taken a sharp downward turn.

In Australia, as covered in our news pages, this has manifested itself most recently and visibly in the form of proposed recruitment caps, which seek both to put limits on the overall number of international students in the country and to redistribute them so that they are not so heavily concentrated in the Group of Eight institutions, and in Sydney and Melbourne in particular.

As our analysis piece this week explains, however, many are doubtful that the latter ambition will work: partly because of the simple fact that consumer demand to study at the University of Sydney is so much stronger than at lesser-known regional universities, and partly because of the general message that the mooted caps send out.

The messaging point is significant, because the caps are just the latest in a succession of policies that have made explicit the souring of public and political opinion – ANU analyst Andrew Norton has highlighted at least nine other recent policy changes that have amplified visa rejection rates and processing delays, increased financial and English language demands and pushed up visa application fees.

Cumulatively, according to Neil Fitzroy, Australasian managing director of the Oxford International Education Group, this is likely to be a more significant drag on international recruitment than any cap, since “the world has a message that Australia’s closed for business”.

This warning about unwelcoming rhetoric is one that has been made multiple times over the last couple of decades, as countries’ enthusiasm for international recruitment has waxed and waned.

In the past, however, it tended to be the case that if one of the big four recruiters – Australia, the US, the UK and Canada – turned sour, another would sweeten their own deal to attract even more of the global student market.

Today, perhaps for the first time, all four are wary of pushing too hard down a path that can bloat immigration numbers, with Canada and the UK both implementing measures that have severely affected recruitment from key markets in the past year.

In the US, meanwhile, the forthcoming election – and Donald Trump’s antipathy towards both higher education and immigration – will cause further disruption, although as we also report this week there is a sense there that financial and demographic pressures might also result in a renewed focus on international students among universities seeking to balance their books.

As for the UK, the new Labour government has been true to its word in being absolutely explicit in its rhetoric, with the education secretary making it her first intervention in higher education to record a video speaking directly to international students to tell them they will be welcome.

But it has done nothing yet about the multiple policy areas that undermine that message, from the prospect that a university could go bankrupt to visa restrictions imposed by the last regime.

At the same time, it was abundantly clear during this year’s domestic recruitment round in the UK that the grounds are continuing to shift, with high-tariff universities hoovering up students at the expense of lower-tariff institutions, and the increasingly significant role played by clearing making it harder than ever for some institutions to manage where they end up.

All of which adds up to a picture of uncertainty, something universities tend to dread.

A consoling thought, perhaps, is that no institution is in that alone – and many might look to others, or to other countries, and feel that, whatever the challenges, it could be worse.

john.gill@timeshighereducation.com