Overseas students are getting harder to attract and unis will feel the squeeze

Because of the perceived quality of their universities, the UK and the USA are already more popular destinations for international students than Australia.

As their universities market themselves more actively to students, especially in China, we may find that students who would have formerly chosen to study in Australia will prefer to study in the UK or USA instead. Canada, Ireland and New Zealand are also increasing their recruitment efforts. Even universities in non-English speaking countries are joining the competition, offering increasing numbers of their courses in English.

To help its universities, the American government has made student visas easier to get than Australian ones and their visa fees are lower than ours. The weak American dollar adds to the attractiveness of their universities.

Both UK and US universities are employing agents to find international students and they have already been successful. International student numbers are rising at UK and American universities while they are falling in Australia.

Australian universities earn a considerable amount of their revenue from international student fees. It is now almost certain that Australia’s revenue from such students will decrease over the next few years.

Competition for philanthropic contributions, grants, industry assistance is already intense, but we can expect it to become even hotter as universities whose budgets are hit scramble for resources. As in any competition, there will be a few winners and many losers.

Prince Charles did not know it but he had stumbled across a watershed moment in history; higher education may never be the same again.