Student visa approvals fall despite higher 2026 planning level

The government that promoted expansion is now restricting student visa grants to control net migration and protect the permanent programme, writes Dr Abul Rizvi.

IN MID-2025 the Government announced that the student planning level for 2026 would be 295,000; This is 25,000 more than the planning level for 2025.

While consistent with the International Education Industry’s demand for “sustainable growth”, Treasury’s net migration forecast 260,000 for 2025-26 and 225,000 for 2026-27. The sharp increase in offshore student visa refusals shows that the Government is concerned about the impact of “sustainable growth” on net migration and the permanent migration program (as it was originally intended to be).

Students contribute about 40 percent of net migration. A significant portion of these are ultimately transferred to permanent transfer applications. The Government cannot continue to support the International Education Sector’s demands for “sustainable growth” (because this is also unsustainable) unless it is prepared to increase the size of the permanent program and accept much higher levels of net migration than the Treasury envisages.

As the government prepares to consider the 2026-27 permanent migration programme, it appears to have realized that it cannot allow student visa numbers to continue rising following policy tightening from mid-2023 to mid-2025. The transformation in his thinking since announcing the higher level of student planning in mid-2025 has been significant. It reconfirms the fact that the government did not consider the impact on net migration and the permanent program when announcing the higher level of student planning.

In the seven months to January 2026, offshore student visa applications increased by over 13,000 in the period to January 2025. This is due to increased student allocations to most providers under the higher planning level. They went out and hired as they were encouraged. But student visa grants decreased by over 11,000.

January data highlights this change (see Table 1). The decline in grant rates is truly extraordinary. The overall grant rate for January 2026 was the highest for any January in history. This reflects poor policy and poor use of resources.

Table 2 shows that the largest tightening was again for South Asian countries. The decline in grant rates for some South Asian countries is extraordinary and continues the trend we saw in December 2025. Nepal and Bangladesh were particularly hard hit. This is a function of a clear policy change and not an aberration or some transactional officer acting fraudulently.

China appears to have largely survived the policy change, although some Southeast Asian countries have also been affected. Weakness in offshore grants to sectors outside higher education continues.

Tightening student visa policy Not as dramatic as in Canada (and it shouldn’t be, either, as Canada will soon be reversing its approach to student visas). But cutting and changing policy is bad practice and makes it impossible for education providers to plan and invest.

inside Sydney Morning HeraldDeputy Minister Responsible for Citizenship Julian Hill He is reported to have said:

“Growth has stabilized, with starts down about 15 percent.”

While this may be true, he and the Minister of Education Jason Clare‘s announcement that the new initial planning level would be increased by 25,000 people in 2026 led the Industry to increase hiring, but the rug was pulled from under them due to a huge increase in visa refusals. This is really bad practice.

We need a long-term approach to managing net migration, and within that we need an approach to student visas that targets high-performing students, encouraging them to take courses that are in Australia’s long-term interests and are truly sustainable.

We are far from that.

Doctor Abul Rizvi He is an independent Australian columnist and a former Deputy Secretary of the Immigration Service. You can follow Abul on Twitter @RizviAbul or Bluesky @abulrizvi.bsky.social.

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