International students have long been central to Australian higher education. They enrich classrooms, bring different perspectives to campuses and create enduring connections between Australia and the rest of the world. They are also vital to the sector’s finances. International education was worth almost A$55 billion to the Australian economy in 2025, including approximately $24.4 billion in tuition fees. Revenue from international students helps universities fund teaching, research, infrastructure and programs that may not be sustainable through domestic enrolments and government funding alone.

But Australia’s dependence on international students is becoming increasingly precarious.

In the first five months of 2026, the number of international students studying in Australia was 6.9% lower than during the same period in 2025. International enrolments were down by 8%, as were new course commencements. Universities may be tempted to respond by intensifying recruitment and marketing. But declining or uncertain student mobility should prompt a more fundamental question.

What if Australian universities stopped expecting international students to do all the travelling?

The friend who always comes to our house

We might think about international education through the metaphor of friendship and hospitality. Imagine we regularly invite a friend to our home. Each time, the friend makes the journey. They sit at the table we have arranged; eat the food we have prepared and follow the customs of our household. We may be gracious hosts. We may sincerely value our friend’s company. We may even celebrate the diversity they bring to our table. But the relationship still takes place almost entirely on our terms.

The friend travels. The friend adjusts. The friend learns the rules of our home.

After many visits, this arrangement may become tiresome. The friend may reasonably ask why we have never accepted an invitation to their home.

For decades, international students have travelled to Australia and adapted to Australian universities. They have learned our academic conventions, assessment expectations, communication styles and institutional practices. They have also borne much of the financial and personal risk. This includes tuition fees, accommodation costs, visa uncertainty, separation from family and the challenge of entering an unfamiliar cultural and educational environment. A reciprocal relationship would require Australian universities to return the visit.

The value of studying abroad is changing

This question is particularly pressing in relation to China, one of Australia’s largest sources of international students. An overseas qualification was once widely seen as a pathway to professional status and upward mobility. But a foreign degree is no longer an automatic guarantee of a desirable job on returning home. Recent research has identified declining recognition of overseas credentials in parts of the Chinese labour market. Graduates must demonstrate that their international education has given them knowledge, skills and experience that employers can use, rather than relying on the prestige of the foreign degree itself.

Other research involving Chinese graduates returning from overseas has found they can be perceived as lacking the local knowledge, workplace familiarity and professional connections needed by Chinese employers. This does not mean overseas education has lost all value. International graduates may develop language proficiency, confidence, intercultural capabilities and global networks. Some studies have also identified wage benefits associated with foreign qualifications.

But the return is uneven. It depends on the institution, discipline, student’s social background, labour market and the graduate’s ability to translate an international education into locally valued knowledge and relationships. Domestic universities across Asia have also expanded rapidly. Students can increasingly obtain high-quality qualifications at home while remaining close to their families, cultures and professional networks. Against this background, Australian universities cannot assume international demand will continue simply because it has existed in the past.

Nor can they solve the problem through marketing alone.

What would it mean to return the visit?

Australian universities could expand the delivery of programs in countries such as China, India, Indonesia and Vietnam. This might involve international branch campuses, jointly delivered degrees, partnerships with local universities, intensive teaching programs, staff exchanges and blended models combining local teaching with international expertise. Australia already has experience in this area. Tens of thousands of students have studied Australian higher education courses offshore through branch campuses, partnerships and other transnational arrangements. But expanding offshore education should not simply involve transplanting an Australian degree into another country.

A university can move geographically without changing culturally or intellectually.

An Australian institution might establish a campus in Asia but continue to control the curriculum, teaching model, assessment practices and definitions of quality. Local academics may be employed to deliver material designed elsewhere, sometimes under poorer conditions than their Australia-based colleagues. Research on Australian transnational education has previously identified inequalities in employment conditions between staff at home campuses and those employed locally by international campuses. This risks reproducing the original power imbalance. We may have entered our friend’s home, but we have brought our own furniture, prepared our own food and told the host where to sit.

Place matters in education

A more reciprocal approach would begin with the country and community in which education is being delivered. Programs would be co-designed with local universities, academics, employers, professional bodies and students. Curricula would respond to local histories, languages, labour markets, policy settings and community needs. Local scholars would not simply provide cultural explanations or deliver an imported curriculum. They would help determine what is taught, how it is taught and what forms of knowledge are valued. Australian academic staff would also need to spend meaningful time in these settings.

This cannot be achieved through academics flying in, teaching an intensive subject and leaving several days later. Staff need time to learn from local colleagues, understand students’ professional aspirations and recognise that familiar Australian teaching practices may not transfer easily into another setting. This would reverse the usual expectation of cultural adjustment. International students are routinely expected to become familiar with Australian norms. Under a reciprocal model, Australian universities and academics would also be required to develop cultural humility and contextual understanding. Students could still benefit from Australian expertise and international networks, but their education would be connected to the environments in which many of them intend to live and work.

Not just another overseas market

There is a danger that universities will see offshore education simply as a new source of revenue. If international students are no longer coming to Australia in sufficient numbers, institutions may attempt to sell the same product to them at home. That would be a missed opportunity.

Transnational education should not be treated merely as an enrolment strategy. It can become a different way of thinking about internationalisation: not as the movement of fee-paying students towards wealthy English-speaking countries, but as the circulation of people, knowledge and institutional responsibility. This would also require shared governance and more equitable research partnerships. Universities in host countries should help determine research priorities and lead projects, rather than being treated mainly as sources of participants, data or local access.

Recent scholarship on decolonising transnational education is increasingly questioning whether international programs reproduce established hierarchies between exporting universities and the communities in which they operate. Quality assurance would remain essential. But quality should not be confused with sameness. A program shaped by Indonesian, Indian, Chinese or Vietnamese contexts may look different from its Australian equivalent while remaining equally rigorous. Indeed, its contextual relevance may make it more educationally valuable.

Returning the invitation

International students have made an extraordinary contribution to Australian universities. They have entered our institutional homes, supported our programs, enriched our classrooms and adapted to practices they did not design. If enrolments continue to decline, the immediate consequences for Australian universities could be serious. But this moment also offers an opportunity to rethink a model that has placed most of the responsibility for mobility and adjustment on students. The future of international education should not depend solely on persuading more students to come to Australia.

Sometimes Australian universities should travel.

Returning the invitation would mean entering another educational home with humility. It would mean accepting that the host country has its own knowledge, priorities and ways of arranging the table. The test is not simply whether Australian universities can establish more campuses overseas. It is whether they can enter these spaces without assuming they should remain in charge.

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