Foreign Students in Retreat

MONASH University is poised to slash about 300 staff and shave $45 million from next year's budget as a nationwide slump in international student enrolments begins to bite.

In another ominous sign for the nation's multibillion-dollar education industry, Monash has predicted a fall of 10 per cent or more in its foreign student enrolments next year.

The prediction came after a report by Curtin University academics warned that, in a worst-case scenario, foreign student enrolments across the sector could plunge from about 214,000 this year to 148,000 in 2015.

This would lead to about 36,000 fewer jobs and a $7 billion collapse in revenue, it said.

Monash vice-chancellor Ed Byrne, in an email to staff yesterday, said there was a ''significant softening of demand in key international markets which is likely to affect the entire Australian higher education sector''.

He said numbers at Monash were predicted to drop by 10 per cent ''at best''.

The National Tertiary Education Union said it had been advised that Monash - which relies on international student revenue for about 20 per cent of its budget - was looking for 300-plus redundancies.

But Professor Byrne said the university had not planned a fixed number of redundancies.

''We need to save approximately $45 million because of the downturn in the international student market and we're looking at a whole range of measures to achieve that,'' he told The Age.

He said the attractiveness of Australia as a study destination was being hit by a combination of the high dollar, strong competition from the United States, Britain and Asia, and recent changes to student visa rules.

His comments came as fresh evidence emerged yesterday that tighter visa rules were proving a turn-off, with a survey of foreign students finding many questioning whether Australia was still a good place to study.

Professor Byrne played down the number of staff who might be affected by cuts at Monash. Savings would be achieved ''through very careful, tight control of filling vacancies and of making new appointments'', and a review of extensions to fixed-term contracts.

But Stan Rosenthal, of the Monash branch of the National Tertiary Education Union, said university representatives had told the union the number of voluntary redundancies wanted was ''300 in the first instance''.

The union was concerned that this would mean staff being forced out when voluntary targets were not met, he said.

Mr Rosenthal said the cuts would affect Monash's performance - an assertion rejected by Professor Byrne. ''We won't make any cuts that compromise in any way the quality of the education we offer,'' he said.

A spokesman for Melbourne University said its student projections for next year were on target. ''The university's mix of international students is different from those of its competitors … we anticipate meeting our projected load,'' he said.

La Trobe expects a 7 per cent drop in international students in 2011, but says it has no plans to reduce staff numbers.

Meanwhile, a survey of students found 40 per cent of Indians and more than a third of the Chinese questioned whether Australia was the place to study after new visa rules made it harder for some to get residency.

The research was commissioned by student recruitment firm IDP Education. Chief executive Anthony Pollock said policymakers needed to be mindful of the damage the changes could do to Australia's reputation.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen's spokeswoman defended the reforms, saying they had cut incentives to seek residence ''through low quality education courses, a practice that damaged the integrity of both the migration program and the education industry''.

Additional reporting by Dan Harrison

This piece was originally published in The Age. You can read it here.