E&OE 

ADRIENNE FRANCIS: Welcome to Luke Sheehy, who is CEO of Universities Australia. Luke, what would be the impact on Australian universities if this proposal to cut international student places was actually put in place?  

LUKE SHEEHY: Well, thanks for having me. This would be absolutely devastating to Australia’s higher education system. It would take billions of dollars of essential resources that international students pay through tuition fees to deliver that world-class research that University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Bill Shorten talked about earlier on your morning program. But also importantly, international student revenues and international student fees cross-subsidise the education experience of the nearly one million Australian students in our 38 public and comprehensive universities across the country. It would be devastating for our universities. We would have to close courses, look at closing campuses, thousands of jobs would be at risk. The experience of Australian students would be poorer for it. And not only that, it would have a detrimental impact on the Australian economy. Even in the ACT, international education is a more than $1 billion turbocharger for the local Canberra economy, and we know it’s around half of the export industry that Canberra produces. 

It’s an important backbone of our economic success as well as our success in making friends and connections right across the world. I think we really need to send a warning to One Nation as well as Labor and the Coalition who’ve just simply been in a conga line on this race to the bottom on international education and say — think about what you’re actually going to do to Australia’s world-class international education sector if you actually make these cuts real. 

ADRIENNE FRANCIS: Of course, tertiary institutions described as visa factories. Are universities too reliant on international students as an income stream to provide that revenue that you say cross-subsidises everybody else? 

LUKE SHEEHY: For 40 years we have been absolutely encouraged by coalition and labor governments alike in Canberra and their state counterparts to enrol more and more international students, so the Commonwealth Treasury gets a cut price deal on funding Australia’s tertiary education system. Bill Shorten made that point, and I’m making that point as well. So, the reality is if you want fewer international students in the system and you want fewer international students in the country, who’s going to pay for the gap that will suddenly arise on university balance sheets? We know many universities around the country aren’t doing as well as others and have budget deficits that would only exacerbate the problem. Canberra universities are doing well, but they could get some extra support. If you take out that essential revenue in the way that One Nation is proposing, it would have catastrophic effects on university’s income and would have to be seeking immediate injection from the Commonwealth. 

I think the question really is for those politicians in Canberra. If you want to rip away the essential revenue that comes from international education, who’s going to replace it? Are you going to slug students for more and more for the cost of their degrees or are you going to actually put your money where your mouth is and fund our universities more fulsomely? 

ADRIENNE FRANCIS: I am thinking about the possible knock-on effects to the health sector with our aging population, also the increasing number of Australians living with disability for longer in their life. What kind of impact could there be across the nation if international students weren’t able to remain in Australia after graduation and those areas, the jobs and careers that could most be impacted? 

LUKE SHEEHY: This is a really worrying trend and a really worrying sign in One Nation’s proposal. Half of Australia’s PhD students, students in Australian universities doing science and technology research are international students. If you got rid of them and then certainly got rid of their ability to come and contribute, you would lose a lot of high-skilled, high-end workers for innovation, technology, science and breakthrough. And of course, many students while they come to Australian universities and education providers are allowed to work around two or three days a week, they provide essential workforce support for aged care, for hospitality, for tourism sectors, and that would be decimated as well. I am calling on our friends in the business community to stand up to these irrational policies. We have been fighting against bad approaches to international education and the migration debate for many years now. Looks like we are going to have to continue doing it into the next election as One Nation simply has joined in the chorus of irrational policy thinking in this space. 

ADRIENNE FRANCIS: Luke Sheehy, thanks for being with us on Afternoons. 

LUKE SHEEHY: Thanks for having me. 

ENDS