Australia raises enrolment limits for 2025/26 but are they reachable?

A joint 4 August 2025 media release from the Ministers for Education, Home Affairs, Immigration and Citizenship, and Skills and Training, and Assistant Minister for International Education sets out Australia's National Planning Level (NPL) for the 2025/26 fiscal year.

The new NPL will be 295,000 new international student places, an increase of 25,000 over the 270,000 limit set for 2024/25 but, "still 8% below the immediate post-COVID peak."

Assistant Minister for International Education Julian Hill said, "This Government remains committed to sensibly managing the size and shape of the on-shore student market and supporting sustainable growth, especially to welcome more students from Southeast Asia and where accompanied by new housing. We want students to see Australia as a premium destination where they can access high quality education and a great student experience."

What is the National Planning Level?

The National Planning Level, or NPL, is a system of allocating new student spaces among some institutions in Australia. While not a hard cap, the NPL aims to control the flow of new students into Australia.

Under last year's Ministerial Direction 111 (MD111), visa applications will be processed for a given institution up to 80% of the indicative cap allocation given in the NPL. Beyond that 80% threshold, that same institution will fall to the end of the processing queue, with greater priority given to universities or colleges that have not reached the 80% benchmark.

There are a number of student categories that are exempted from the NPL limits, including K-12 students, those pursuing stand-alone English language courses, students from the Pacific and Timor-Leste, research students, those with government scholarships, and some students who begin their studies offshore and then transition to study in Australia.

What this means in part is that the NPL limits are fully allocated across the higher education and vocational sectors, with the former receiving roughly two-thirds of all NPL spaces in 2024/25.

How will the NPL work this year?

The allocation between higher education and vocational sectors will be roughly the same in 2025/26, with higher education institutions (public and private) sharing 196,750 new student places. The remaining 98,250 NPL spots will be allocated across vocational training institutions.

The institutional limits specified by the Department of Education indicate that public universities will see their NPL spaces expand by up to 9% overall. In contrast, for-profit private universities will be limited to a 3% increase.

The joint release sets out that all providers will at least receive their allocation from 2024/25. Public universities (as well as private not-for-profits) can apply to have their NPL limits increased by "demonstrating delivery" on two government priorities:

• Increased engagement with Southeast Asia (in line with Australia's strategy for the region through 2040); and
• Provision of safe and affordable student housing.

The other notable change in the NPL model for this year is that, "international students transitioning to publicly funded universities from secondary school studies in Australia and from affiliated pathways providers or TAFE institutes will be exempt from the National Planning Level."

Finally, the government has also indicated that MD111 will soon give way to a new directive which reflects the new NPL allocations for 2025/26.

Are those new limits within reach?

Full-year data from the Department of Home Affairs reveals that the number of visas granted to students applying from offshore to study in Australia came in considerably below the NPL limit for 2024/25.

Keeping in mind that the NPL limit for the year was 270,000 places, the total number of visas granted to offshore applicants totalled only 234,040 for the year. Further, that total includes applicant categories, such as ELICOS and K-12 studies, that are exempt from the NPL.

Just under 170,000 visas were granted to new students coming to Australia for higher education (against a NPL limit for the sector of 176,000). The real gap, however, appears in the vocational education and training (VET) sector, which saw only 11,572 visas granted against an NPL allocation of 94,000.

In terms of visa grants to primary applicants in 2024/25, only 8,887 visas were issued to new VET students. This compares to 38,415 in the recent-year peak of 2022/23 and the pre-pandemic level of 25,727 in 2018/19.

Independent ELICOS enrolments have been similarly, and severely, affected. The 15,020 visas granted to new ELICOS students last year is a significant decline from the 60,299 visas granted for language students in 2022/23 and the 29,090 visas issued in 2018/19.

The broad picture then is that higher education enrolments, while below the 2022/23 surge, have been much less affected by policy changes introduced over the last two years. In fact, visa grants to new higher education students in 2024/25 were comfortably above pre-pandemic levels.

In contrast, ELICOS and VET enrolments have been badly disrupted by the new policy settings, which reach well beyond the NPL to include changes in visa rejection rates, delays in processing, dramatic increases in visa application fees, and more. "A plunge in the issuance of student visas has largely bypassed Australian higher education, with overseas demand for university degrees remaining well above pre-pandemic levels while collapsing in other sectors," summed up a recent item in Times Higher Education.

By extension, the main implication of the increased NPL settings for 2025/26 is that it will provide for stability and even growth for higher education enrolments while doing little to address the challenges that are roiling other key segments of Australia's higher education sector.

What are people saying?

The reaction to the NPL announcement reflects that variable impact across the sector. "The additional 25,000 new overseas student places provides the sector with some certainty for 2026," says IEAA CEO Phil Honeywood. "However, these new places are very much weighted to our public universities with private higher education providers being provided with only a 3% increase of their already restricted allocations. Until we achieve a significant discount on student visa application charges, then Australia’s private English Language providers are also facing an uphill battle to keep their doors open.”

"This is a sensible approach and will provide the stability and certainty universities desperately need," added Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy. "We welcome the opportunity for universities to grow their international student intake by aligning with key national priorities."

"This week’s announcement continues the government’s 'picking winners' approach to industry policy," said Professor Andrew Norton of Monash University. "It limits large movements of student enrolments between education providers and offers public universities preferential treatment."

For additional background, please see:

• "Australia’s central bank highlights importance of international students to national economy"
• "Australia’s Labor Party signals an increase in student visa fees"
• "How have changes in policy settings impacted international student recruitment at Australian universities?"
• "Australia: Impact of more restrictive visa settings reflected in latest student sentiment survey"