the influx of foreign students caused many to (rightly) point to how such numbers of foreign students would cause rental accomodation pressure.
I'll add that foreign students may be effecting the rental rate increases as students tend to use houses with large number of bedrooms, even converted closets, no windows and no fresh air, and live in crowded conditions.
I lived in a couple of these houses back in the early 90s myself. not exactly congenial to sharing with others. way too close for my comfort.
so over the weekend pressure was applied to universities to provide more on-campus accomodation.
"The Commonwealth announced its plans to ensure the "integrity and sustainability" of the international education sector and set a cap on the number of student enrolments, to help with sustainable sector growth and ease national housing demand. "The cap would also mean educators are required to build purpose-built accommodations if they want to exceed limits to the caps. Last year 787,000 international students studied in Australia, exceeding pre-pandemic levels." ABC LINK
note the 787,000 students was due to the fact that universities had been forced to close (receiving no funding at all under the Lib orders) during covid and so had no foreign students at all. the 2022 intake included all levels of students whereas a 'normal' intake was mostly first year intake students and so much less than the '22 intake draught.
"The government said it would clamp down on the large growth in international student numbers after the results of a migration review this year, where it announced new visa streams and stricter language requirements to slow migration levels. "Federal Education Minister Jason Clare said he had been in detailed consultation with leaders from the international education sector to "make sure we get the design and implementation of these critical reforms right". (ibid)
