This funding enabled research on the recent politics of an illiberal turn in public policy towards international students in several polities, and Australia in particular, where - for four decades - universities and public agencies were encouraged and incentivised to promote the nation as an education destination. International student revenues have become a core source of financial resources for many Australian universities, with such dependence most notable in the some of the most prestigious and comprehensive research-intensive universities (the ‘Go8). Such fees serve as cross-subsidy to a large expansion in domestic student participation, and associated expansion of campus facilities, and to research activities. Universities have developed considerable expertise in international marketing and recruitment, and university peak bodies have become well-resourced advocates for conducive public policy settings re student visa regimes and re higher education policy in general. Since the late 1980s universities have been politically somewhat ineffective in securing commensurate public funding to support government aspirations to expand domestic higher education participation; with an effectively laissez-faire policy re foreign student recruitment providing consolation to the university sector. Institutions were effectively free to recruit abroad, with the visa regime functioning as a reactive demand-driven mechanism. A 2024 student visa cap regime therefore was a monumental shift in policy logic, despite strong opposition from within the higher education sector. This research endeavour explores why this policy shift has occurred, despite institutional opposition.

This first stage analysis situates the policy shift in the specific circumstances that prevailed in the immediate aftermath of the COVID pandemic. A surge in official net migration arrival numbers, including international students, following the end of Australia’a severe border closure, coincided with a steep rise in real estate prices and rents following economic stimulus and domestic social change. Populist oppositional political entrepreneurship conflated the two; contributing to pressures for a reactive illiberal policy shift. Ongoing research will look further at the critical tropes that gained ideational salience, as well as longer-established narratives critical of perceived managerialism and mission drift in universities. Following on from paper presentations at ECPR 2025 and IPBA 2025, research will be presented at ECPR 2026 in Krakow.