Major universities have offered places to international students that are now uncertain under new federal government visa caps.

At least 11 institutions had made offers before Education Minister Jason Clare announced his much-anticipated international student caps on Tuesday.

Earlier this week, head of the Group of Eight Vicki Thomson — who represents the country’s most prestigious universities — said institutions would have to rescind offers that have already been made.

“We will have to tell students that we have made offers to, sorry you cannot come to our universities,” she said.

“Our data people are working through it but across the Group of Eight we estimate that the real cut to our members will be around 22,000 less students … we will have to go out to those students potentially and say ‘sorry, that offer we made to you we can’t now commit to’.”

Under the federal government’s proposed overhaul of the higher education sector, no more than 145,000 international students would be able to start their studies in Australian universities in 2025.

Some students would be exempted, including those studying post-grad research degrees and standalone English language courses and people from the Pacific and Timor-Leste. 

Each university would also be subject to an individualised cap, calculated based on their recent levels of international student commencements among other factors.

Universities were given an “indicative” level and a complex formula to do their own calculations on Tuesday, but Mr Clare said it would take up to two weeks for those caps to be finalised.

Melbourne University and the Australian National University (ANU) have told the ABC they are not certain whether they will have to rescind any of the offers they have made to students.

At this stage, the ANU does not expect to have to retract offers but it is still calculating what its cap will be.

Many smaller universities have said they’re confident the places they have already offered to international students will not have to be cancelled.

The spokesperson for the University of Melbourne — Australia’s top-ranked tertiary institution — said it was likely to take about a week to complete the calculations. 

On Tuesday, the university’s vice-chancellor Duncan Maskell said the university remained “strongly opposed” to the caps.

“It is staggering that we continue to have this debate while there is apparently no serious intent to address really major reform issues,” he said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the ANU said the change would lower the number of international students it would take on in 2025, but that the “exact numbers are still subject to data verification”. 

“We are working through what this means for our community, including its financial impact.”

The ABC understands the University of Queensland has similarly sent out offers that are now uncertain, but would not confirm to the ABC how many had been sent out.

Uni with most international students confident offers won’t be rescinded

Meanwhile, a University of Sydney spokesperson said their indicative cap was a “significant reduction on our 2023 numbers”, but they did not expect to have to rescind any offers.

The university — the oldest in Australia — tops the list for international student enrolments. International student fees made up 47 per cent of their revenue in 2022, followed by the University of Queensland (34 per cent), the University of Melbourne (33 per cent), Monash University (31 per cent) and the University of New South Wales (31 per cent). 

“For several years we’ve been working to ensure our growth in international student enrolments has been slow, consistent and sustainable, including by putting in place our own caps on high-demand programs,” the University of Sydney spokesperson said in a statement.

Alongside some of their more prestigious counterparts, other universities have also sent out international student offers but said they do not expect to have to rescind any to get under the caps.

La Trobe University, the University of Southern Queensland, the University of Western Sydney and the University of Technology Sydney also told the ABC that they had already sent out international student offers, but added that they did not believe any would be rescinded. 

Big unis lose out as others benefit

The proposed cap — which is subject to the government’s bill passing parliament — has split the higher education sector, with some metropolitan universities set to lose out on students while smaller regional and suburban universities can ramp up their international enrolments.

Mr Clare said the caps, intended to replace other controversial measures to streamline the study visa application process, are aimed at levelling the playing field.

“This is about setting the system up in a better and a fairer way, so it’s not just a lucky few universities that benefit from international education, but it’s the whole sector,” he said.

While many of the bigger universities have bristled at the changes, other smaller institutions that stand to potentially get more international students are more optimistic.

University of Wollongong interim vice-chancellor John Dewar said in a statement that the changes would make the system fairer. 

“We welcome Education Minister Jason Clare’s recognition that the current approach of managing student visa numbers by ministerial direction 107 is having a profound and unfair impact on regional universities like UOW,” he said.

Swinburne University, Federation University and James Cook University also welcomed the announcement.

In a statement, Mr Clare said universities should plan for 2025 in the “context of the government’s public statements on migration and international education and the indicative limits provided to them”. 

“Australia will continue to welcome international students in a way that is sustainable and reinforces quality for all students.”