University lecture
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The Australian government's proposal to cap the number of international students at 270,000 in 2025 faces strong opposition, as the Coalition and the Greens are most likely to block it in the Parliament.

The goal of this proposed cap was to discourage questionable educational providers and return temporary migration numbers to pre-pandemic levels.

The Labor government intended to limit the number of new international students admitted to universities to 145,000, other higher education institutions to 30,000, and vocational education and training to 95,000, ABC reported.

"The proposed cap in the education bill before parliament will not even touch the sides of this problem," the Coalition's education spokesperson Sarah Henderson, Home Affairs spokesperson James Paterson, and Immigration spokesperson Dan Tehan said in a joint statement on Monday.

"We cannot support measures which will only serve to compound this crisis of the government's making."

The Coalition's position was supported by the Group of Eight universities, who saw it as a chance to have productive discussions about controlling the number of students.

Labor's plan was also likely to fail since the Greens have called the bill "racist" and claimed it used foreign students as scapegoats.

"[The discussion] got wrapped up into cost of living, housing and migration, and I think that's where we've really lost our way," Group of Eight Chief Executive Vicki Thomson said, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. "It got hijacked by the politics. That's not to say it won't happen again, but what universities now have is certainty going into 2025."

Universities Australia's head, Luke Sheehy, also voiced concerns that the government's intention to restrict the number of overseas students will further complicate the problems faced by the country's international education industry, essentially launching an ongoing "war" on it.

"Both sides of politics need to ask themselves, do they want to invest in our universities for the future or do they want to continue this phoney war right through to an election," he said.

International students are part of Net Overseas Migration (NOM), which is something that Australia's major parties want to decrease. Peter Dutton, the leader of the opposition, wants about 160,000 NOM for the fiscal year, whereas the government wants 260,000.