Population growth from international students has ruined Australian housing.
The government handed universities free reign to hand out as many visa as they liked, and they handed out millions.
And the unspoken deal is that you're not buying an education, you're buying residency in Australia because a large percentage of these students never go home again.
And the government has staunchly - ridiculously - stated for years that international students do not impact housing. Yeah right - they don't live anywhere.
It's just a vast population growth program under the guise of international education with immigrants required to pay their $50K to universities for the nod and a wink right to live here.
Australia, which already had a housing crisis, now has a housing nuclear inferno.
Absolutely out of control population growth. The governments do it because more people equals "growing economy" - the only thing they care about.
And they don't invest in the infrastructure to support the millions of people added to the population so the quality of life goes down for everyone, there's budget cuts in government services, the inequality gap widens.
Growth - through population growth, through "international students" - governments absolutely love it because it hides their bad economic management, and the rich people declare how wonderful massive population growth is because those rich people own at least 3 houses.
The entire game is rigged for rich people to get rich and everyone else to shove over and make room because there's a lot more people coming.
Your children per women is 1.4 are you really complaining that you can supplement with highly educated youth? If housing is an issue blame your government for shit policy.
The people complaining about the international students don't care about the population replacement rate - they only care about their own individual circumstance at this point in time, not some 50-80 years in the future (where the 1.4 replace rate starts being a problem).
> they only care about their own individual circumstance at this point in time
Which are circumstances that they should care about. Unfortunately many are also prone to falling for dog whistles about international students which aren't the root cause of their problems and distract from getting deep into the weeds about real issues with Australian housing.
At least in North America the issue is federal and even state governments have divorced interests from municipal governments.
They are setting immigration allowances with respect to growth and financial planning.
Municipalities generally over the last 50 years decided they like their neighborhoods how they are, thank you very much.
Local governments needed to be building for this all along. Now we play catch-up.
Though, also, immigrant students are very desirable due to how much they general pay for school (and this subsidize the rest of the budget), and how little any municipal, state, or federal governments had to pay to produce a productive adult taxpayer.
> Population growth from international students has ruined Australian housing.
If that is so, why is Australia's housing problem Australia wide and not isolated to high student population locations?
Australia's problem with housing is Australia hasn't/doesn't treat housing as housing, they have treated it as a tax efficient investment vehicle with negative gearing.
International students make up about 5% of the total rental housing demand but their impact tends to be felt most in capital cities where the universities are.
Removing them won't improve things as much as you might think.
The housing crisis is a supply and demand problem so they've got to increase housing supply.
The problem there is these is a shortage of construction workers. So the workforce simply isn't there to build more houses. Current construction workforce is 110% maxxed out.
I reckon they should be handing out visas to qualified construction workers left and right to solve that problem, then get the homes built. Dubai and Singapore do this and have no such shortage of construction workers. I can't see why we can't do the same.
Removing international students will also have big flow on negative effects for the rest of the economy.
> Removing international students will also have big flow on negative effects for the rest of the economy.
Damn right, it's big business for Australia; International education earned Australia $55 billion in 2025 from some ~ 844,000 students that year.
( ~ 850K students has been peak international student population per annum in Australia, its never exceeded a million )
These are temporary education visa's that may in a few cases lead to insecure work visa's in Australia and while some international students may get citizenship after 10 years of expensive and insecure stay in Australia .. the total number of permanent migrants accepted each year is (currently) capped at a modest 185,000 per annum (across the board, not just limited to former international students).
> Removing international students will also have big flow on negative effects for the rest of the economy.
It will. Because guess what, these students are working jobs (mostly in hospitality) no one else wants to work. Businesses no longer able to find staff.
I agree. The solution isn't cutting overseas students. The solution is to build more houses. To build more houses get more construction workers (who can coincidentally also build houses for themselves).
Nobody wants those jobs because they're illegally paying below award wage and the work conditions are substandard. Domiciled Australians (rightfully) expect fair wage and decent working conditions.
Just do what Singapore does and import migrant construction crews from China or India (or other south Asian countries). You get the standard 33 story concrete blocks that they can build cheaply, and your housing problems are solved. You can even turn them into pseudo public housing (again like Singapore does).
I think in most of the west construction jobs are so incredibly protected and regulated, they just can’t seem to build anything anymore.
International students have caused a lot of weird effects in uk universities, from people being "encouraged" ti not fail them to keep the income, to required grades being higher for local students, which is a problem in subjects where there is a limited intake, to accommodation pricing jumps, and providers targeting foreign students, meaning less choice for local students. The income has also covered up a lot of the defunding of education by the government.
I think there have been a lot of unanticipated secondary effects with the sector encouraging so many.
> We have also seen a series of problems involving misuse and exploitation of student visas, where visas are used as an entry point for living and working in the UK without any intention to complete the course, and increasing numbers of asylum claims from students at the end of their course, even though nothing substantive has changed in their home country while they have been in the UK.
> In 2021, international students at UK universities generated an estimated £20.65 billion in exports through living expenditure and tuition fees, but it is right that these benefits are shared.[footnote 48] The Government will explore introducing a levy on higher education provider income from international students, to be reinvested into the higher education and skills system. Further details will be set out in the Autumn Budget.
Tuition fees for international students were already very expensive in the UK compared to most of the EU. Surely this will only make things worse? Is the goal to reduce the number of int'l students?
I couldn't afford full time tuition in the early 2000s, in spite of working a half time job while at uni.
After Brexit the tuition even for Europeans increased from 10K£ pounds a year to 40K£. A thousand pounds will not change much. It does of course change the kind of people they can admit from abroad, but it seems that the UK has a lot of demand. When I did an Erasmus MSc funded by the EU, I was the only European in the whole cohort. Many peers explicitly told me that they applied to get a chance to stay in Europe after they graduated. Most did.
Universities get a significant portion of their income from international students. Perhaps making them pay a little more for the externalities they create is fair.
The article reports it in an odd way, making it sound like it singles out students from Nigeria, Kenya, India and Pakistan. The fee applies to any student who pays international tuition rates.
Population growth from international students has ruined Australian housing.
The government handed universities free reign to hand out as many visa as they liked, and they handed out millions.
And the unspoken deal is that you're not buying an education, you're buying residency in Australia because a large percentage of these students never go home again.
And the government has staunchly - ridiculously - stated for years that international students do not impact housing. Yeah right - they don't live anywhere.
It's just a vast population growth program under the guise of international education with immigrants required to pay their $50K to universities for the nod and a wink right to live here.
Australia, which already had a housing crisis, now has a housing nuclear inferno.
Absolutely out of control population growth. The governments do it because more people equals "growing economy" - the only thing they care about.
And they don't invest in the infrastructure to support the millions of people added to the population so the quality of life goes down for everyone, there's budget cuts in government services, the inequality gap widens.
Growth - through population growth, through "international students" - governments absolutely love it because it hides their bad economic management, and the rich people declare how wonderful massive population growth is because those rich people own at least 3 houses.
The entire game is rigged for rich people to get rich and everyone else to shove over and make room because there's a lot more people coming.
Your children per women is 1.4 are you really complaining that you can supplement with highly educated youth? If housing is an issue blame your government for shit policy.
The people complaining about the international students don't care about the population replacement rate - they only care about their own individual circumstance at this point in time, not some 50-80 years in the future (where the 1.4 replace rate starts being a problem).
> they only care about their own individual circumstance at this point in time
Which are circumstances that they should care about. Unfortunately many are also prone to falling for dog whistles about international students which aren't the root cause of their problems and distract from getting deep into the weeds about real issues with Australian housing.
At least in North America the issue is federal and even state governments have divorced interests from municipal governments.
They are setting immigration allowances with respect to growth and financial planning.
Municipalities generally over the last 50 years decided they like their neighborhoods how they are, thank you very much.
Local governments needed to be building for this all along. Now we play catch-up.
Though, also, immigrant students are very desirable due to how much they general pay for school (and this subsidize the rest of the budget), and how little any municipal, state, or federal governments had to pay to produce a productive adult taxpayer.
> Population growth from international students has ruined Australian housing.
If that is so, why is Australia's housing problem Australia wide and not isolated to high student population locations?
Australia's problem with housing is Australia hasn't/doesn't treat housing as housing, they have treated it as a tax efficient investment vehicle with negative gearing.
1. Ensure that existing housing stock is used efficiently (no empty second homes, empty apartments being treated was an asset).
2. Build more _affordable_ housing stock.
Doesn't seem like that hard.
International students make up about 5% of the total rental housing demand but their impact tends to be felt most in capital cities where the universities are.
Removing them won't improve things as much as you might think.
The housing crisis is a supply and demand problem so they've got to increase housing supply.
The problem there is these is a shortage of construction workers. So the workforce simply isn't there to build more houses. Current construction workforce is 110% maxxed out.
I reckon they should be handing out visas to qualified construction workers left and right to solve that problem, then get the homes built. Dubai and Singapore do this and have no such shortage of construction workers. I can't see why we can't do the same.
Removing international students will also have big flow on negative effects for the rest of the economy.
> Removing international students will also have big flow on negative effects for the rest of the economy.
Damn right, it's big business for Australia; International education earned Australia $55 billion in 2025 from some ~ 844,000 students that year.
( ~ 850K students has been peak international student population per annum in Australia, its never exceeded a million )
These are temporary education visa's that may in a few cases lead to insecure work visa's in Australia and while some international students may get citizenship after 10 years of expensive and insecure stay in Australia .. the total number of permanent migrants accepted each year is (currently) capped at a modest 185,000 per annum (across the board, not just limited to former international students).
> Removing international students will also have big flow on negative effects for the rest of the economy.
It will. Because guess what, these students are working jobs (mostly in hospitality) no one else wants to work. Businesses no longer able to find staff.
I agree. The solution isn't cutting overseas students. The solution is to build more houses. To build more houses get more construction workers (who can coincidentally also build houses for themselves).
Nobody wants those jobs because they're illegally paying below award wage and the work conditions are substandard. Domiciled Australians (rightfully) expect fair wage and decent working conditions.
Just do what Singapore does and import migrant construction crews from China or India (or other south Asian countries). You get the standard 33 story concrete blocks that they can build cheaply, and your housing problems are solved. You can even turn them into pseudo public housing (again like Singapore does).
I think in most of the west construction jobs are so incredibly protected and regulated, they just can’t seem to build anything anymore.
International students have caused a lot of weird effects in uk universities, from people being "encouraged" ti not fail them to keep the income, to required grades being higher for local students, which is a problem in subjects where there is a limited intake, to accommodation pricing jumps, and providers targeting foreign students, meaning less choice for local students. The income has also covered up a lot of the defunding of education by the government. I think there have been a lot of unanticipated secondary effects with the sector encouraging so many.
>to required grades being higher for local students, which is a problem in subjects where there is a limited intake
I saw many courses in Clearing listed as being only for foreign students.
Context:
> We have also seen a series of problems involving misuse and exploitation of student visas, where visas are used as an entry point for living and working in the UK without any intention to complete the course, and increasing numbers of asylum claims from students at the end of their course, even though nothing substantive has changed in their home country while they have been in the UK.
> In 2021, international students at UK universities generated an estimated £20.65 billion in exports through living expenditure and tuition fees, but it is right that these benefits are shared.[footnote 48] The Government will explore introducing a levy on higher education provider income from international students, to be reinvested into the higher education and skills system. Further details will be set out in the Autumn Budget.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restoring-control...
Tuition fees for international students were already very expensive in the UK compared to most of the EU. Surely this will only make things worse? Is the goal to reduce the number of int'l students?
I couldn't afford full time tuition in the early 2000s, in spite of working a half time job while at uni.
After Brexit the tuition even for Europeans increased from 10K£ pounds a year to 40K£. A thousand pounds will not change much. It does of course change the kind of people they can admit from abroad, but it seems that the UK has a lot of demand. When I did an Erasmus MSc funded by the EU, I was the only European in the whole cohort. Many peers explicitly told me that they applied to get a chance to stay in Europe after they graduated. Most did.
Universities get a significant portion of their income from international students. Perhaps making them pay a little more for the externalities they create is fair.
The article reports it in an odd way, making it sound like it singles out students from Nigeria, Kenya, India and Pakistan. The fee applies to any student who pays international tuition rates.