UK to charge universities $1,200 per international student

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.