Australia’s Labor government will allow universities to enrol 11% more international students next year, despite promising to reduce immigration, while new data shows shocking increases in foreign student academic misconduct and cheating.
Universities enrolments are capped at 161,725 for 2027, 16,535 higher than this year, no institutions had quotas cut, and just four had first-year enrolment levels frozen.
The most prestigious of the four, the University of Sydney, has been forced to form a new taskforce to crack down on cheating, and revealed 91% of its academic misconduct and fraud cases involved international students, who make up 52% of the student population.
The university recorded 330 serious academic misconduct and fraud cases in 2025, and a report found the proportion involving foreign students had increased from 80% two years earlier, The Australian reported.
There were also nearly 3,000 cases of suspected misconduct, more than 700 cases of alleged cheating using AI, and almost 700 exam breaches.
“[International student] overrepresentation may reflect a range of possible risk factors, including limited support networks, financial pressures and family or cultural expectations,” the report said.
The overall number of serious misconduct cases fell, but the report warned that the decline “should be interpreted with caution, as reduced reporting may reflect changes in detection patterns rather than a genuine decrease in misconduct”.
The University of Sydney will bring in the country’s largest number of first-year international students in 2027, 11,900, followed by Melbourne’s Monash University on 11,300, up 8.7% on this year.
The University of Melbourne’s quota will grow by 12.9% to 10,500, RMIT’s will increase 16.6% to 7,700, La Trobe University’s will grow 17% to 4,800, Victoria University’s will increase 12.5% to 4,050, and Deakin University will enrol 6,550, up 15%.
The Australian National University is allowed to bring in 3,750, 10% more than in 2026, the University of NSW’s quota is 9% higher at 10,350, and the University of Technology Sydney’s numbers will grow 11.5% to 5,350.
Macquarie University can bring in 5,250 (17% more), and Western Sydney University can enrol 4,000 (18% more).
The University of Queensland can increase enrolments by 14% to 8,050 international students, and the Queensland University of Technology’s quota will rise 5.6% to 4,750.
The University of Western Australia can enrol 18% more for a total of 3,350, and Adelaide University’s quota will increase 9% to 7,350.
The University of New England, Flinders University and James Cook University had their first-year international enrolments frozen along with the University of Sydney.
The federal Department of Education’s overall cap on international student commencements, which includes students in the vocational and training (VET) sector, remains at 295,000 per year, up from 270,000 in 2025.
The cap excludes the English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS) sector and non-award sector, as well as higher degree by research students, various types of scholarship students, students with “twinning” arrangements with overseas universities, and students from the Pacific and Timor-Leste.
According to the most recent data, in the year to August 738,694 international students studied in Australia, 8% lower than during the same period in 2025. University sector enrolments fell by less than 1%, while ELICOS numbers fell 24% and VET 19%.
China was the source of 23% of international students, followed by India on 16%, Nepal on 9%, and Bangladesh and Vietnam on 4%.
Header image: Left, a foreign student graduates from the University of Sydney (USU). Right, international students at the University of Melbourne (UMSU).
