The Albanese government is facing fervent backlash against its plan to cap international students as experts question its design and whether the policy will help with housing pressures.

Universities Australia chair David Lloyd ratcheted up the higher education sector’s campaign against student caps on Wednesday, saying it treats universities like “political play things”.

He told the National Press Club that students were being used as “cannon fodder in a poll-driven battle over migration just damages the nation’s standing and reputation and our universities with it”.

But criticism over the caps isn’t shaking the resolve of Education Minister Jason Clare, who says the government wants to make the distribution of students more equitable between universities.

Details about the caps published by Clare late last week showed some public universities face cuts up to 52 per cent on 2023 levels, while others will experience substantial increases.

The figures revealed a net reduction of just 1020 places across the public universities sector, though there has been a large rise in students this year that the comparison doesn’t capture.

Housing link labelled ‘politics’

University of New South Wales professor Richard Holden said that even when 2024 growth is accounted for, the caps aren’t even close to enough to move the needle on the housing crisis.

He said many international students don’t really spill over into the broader housing sector and instead are in the market for specialised accommodation.

To the extent they do spill over he said the effects are largely limited to the areas immediately around university campuses.

“The cuts they’re talking about would represent one-tenth of one per cent of all the residential dwellings in Australia,” Holden said.

“Quantitatively this is just a drop in the ocean. The idea that it will help the housing market is detached from reality; it’s just politics, not economics.”

Universities are also calling the international student caps a political calculation from the Albanese government, which faces pressure on migration before the next federal election.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton pledged student caps in his budget reply speech earlier this year and since then Coalition housing spokesperson Andrew Bragg has explicitly linked international student numbers to the housing crisis.

But Labor has avoided such explicit language to describe its own motivations, with Clare focusing mainly on the perceived issue of fairness among universities for international revenue.

He did say there would be a “link” to housing, including incentives for universities to build more accommodation, which has since been widely reported as Labor using housing as a justification.

Nevertheless, Labor is using the policy to defend against Coalition attacks around international student numbers, which have risen sharply in recent years in a bounce back post-pandemic.

“It’s designed to make sure that we set up this system in a better and a fairer way, and a more sustainable way,” Clare said of the caps.

‘Complex methodology’

But higher education consultant Claire Field said the design of the caps themselves are difficult for universities to navigate and don’t reflect the government’s stated aim of improving equitability.

Field said the policy’s intention to ensure domestic students receive high-quality education and that there is a diversity of foreign students across universities and courses makes sense.

“But I don’t think a hard cap and then this complex methodology is delivering on that,” Field said.

Field pointed to government data suggesting Federation University in Victoria would have its cap in 2025 be half of its 2023 student numbers, while University of the Sunshine Coast doubles.

“You can see some incredibly different impacts,” Field said.

“You haven’t got anything where we can consistently say, all of the regional universities will have a higher number than 2023.”