Inside International Education

1 July 2026: What is next?

After two years of immigration changes and enforcement, what should the sector expect after 1 July 2026?

For two years, sector policy has arrived on a commencement date with very short notice. When a change gets announced it is usually a mess: people’s lives are affected, and everyone runs around for a few weeks until it settles into a new normal.

International education is not a self-contained sector. It feeds migration, housing, the labour market, and the university balance sheet, so when the settings move, the shock travels. The last two years bear that out. Visa fee hikes, high refusal rates, and narrowing pathways have reshaped the whole industry.

The measures are commencing, close together, and several have already landed while the sector was still treating them as future tense.

Visa fee price is the lever

Look at what the cost curve has done. The student visa charge went from $1,600 to $2,000 in July 2025. The Temporary Graduate charge was raised three times in just over a year and now sits at $4,600 for most applicants, the most expensive post study work visa anywhere. Dependant charges on the 485 went up at the same time.

None of this caps a number. It prices behaviour. And the government has said openly that a different charge for short duration study is on the table, with no decision made. Read that as a decision deferred, not declined.

There is a second edge to price that gets less attention. The charge is non-refundable, so a refusal is still revenue. I broke the numbers down in a past article. In 2024-25 the student visa program raised around $683 million in application charges, and roughly $123 million of that came from refused applications. As refusal rates climb, a larger share of the take comes from people who never receive the visa. A rising refusal rate does not cost the government. It earns more per lodgement.

So the honest answer to the question everyone is asking. Yes, expect more. The student and 485 streams have been the test bed for price as policy, and from the Treasury’s point of view the test has worked. The next increase does not need a new idea. It needs a budget cycle.

The 485 visa

The 485 was sold as the bridge from study to skilled migration. At $4,600, plus dependant charges, plus a shrinking list of eligible qualifications and a tighter age limit, the bridge is narrowing while the toll rises. The visa still exists. The proposition it was built on is being dismantled by increment.

Watch this stream for the next removal rather than the next price. Dependants are the obvious target. The cost has already been used to discourage them. Exclusion from eligibility is the version of that lever that has not been pulled yet.

Dependants: should they get visas?

The net overseas migration argument keeps circling back to dependants on student and graduate visas. I covered the data on this last week. It does not support the loudest version, the one that targets short coursework. The larger and rising dependant population sits on the 485, not the short course student visa. If a removal comes, the defensible place to start is the graduate visa, and that is the stream already absorbing the cost signal.

My own position has not changed. Partners and children should not sit on a student visa for a course under a year. The exception is long term work and research. A removal targeted there would be sound policy. A blanket removal across all student dependants would not be.

The Working Holiday ballot

The ballot already runs for China, India, and Vietnam under the Work and Holiday visa. The Budget signalled expanded use of ballots across the program, with detail to follow. That is worth reading carefully. A ballot is a cap that looks like fairness. It controls volume without a public number to attack, and it shifts the program from demand driven to selection driven.

Expect the ballot logic to spread. It is the cleanest tool the Department has for managing a popular stream without owning a hard cap in the headlines.

Partner visas

The partner backlog is heading toward 120,000 by mid year. Partner processing is demand driven by law, which means the usual levers, caps and ballots and price, do not work the same way here. The government cannot ballot its way out of a legal obligation to process.

So the partner stream gets the one thing every other stream gets: a higher evidence bar at lodgement, decision ready or refused, fewer second chances to supply what was missing. The backlog does not get cleared by reform. It gets managed by raising the standard of what counts as a complete application and refusing the rest faster.

Protection visa

The Budget named the protection system directly, with reforms framed around misuse and around discouraging weak judicial review applications. The numbers behind that are large. Tens of thousands refused at the primary stage and again at the Tribunal, still onshore. This is the slowest moving and most politically charged stream, and it is the one to watch for the sharpest change. The pressure has been building longest, and the appeal path has just been narrowed for student refusals as a proof of concept. What works on students tends to travel.

Tribunal review

Will the Tribunal process for student visa refusals arrive with a bang? From 1 June 2026, reviews of student visa refusals are decided on the papers, without an oral hearing, except where character, health, fraud, or a special return criterion is in play. The bang is not coming. It happened four weeks ago. The applicant who used to rescue a thin case by turning up and explaining it no longer gets that chance. The written file is the case.

Providers and agents under the microscope

The scrutiny on the provider and agent side is the part the sector keeps hoping is temporary. It is not. Commission classification reporting, the PRISMS English test identifier, agent benefit records surfacing on a fixed cycle, MD115 sorting providers by conduct. These are not a crackdown with an end date. They are the permanent instrumentation of the sector.

Set this against grant rates at a twenty year low and an appeal that is now decided on the papers, and the squeeze runs end to end. Harder to get the grant. Harder to overturn the refusal. More to evidence at every step in between.

The through line across all of it is the same one I keep coming back to. None of this is volume policy dressed as integrity. It is conduct policy with volume as a side effect. The settings reward whoever can show their working, on demand, in writing, the first time. The appeal on the papers, the decision ready partner application, the front loaded GS case, the agent benefit record that has to reconcile against a government system. Every one of them is the same instruction. Evidence it now, or lose.

What comes next

So, the open question for the back half of the year: what comes next? More price, or structural change for student, 485, and the rest? My read. Another charge increase is the safe bet, because it needs no new policy and the precedent is set. A differential charge for short courses is the live proposal to watch. Dependant removal on the 485 is the structural change most likely to actually land. Ballot expansion is confirmed in principle and waiting on detail. Protection is the wild card.

What are you seeing in the pipeline? I would rather read this off people working the caseload than forecast it alone.

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