Australia, explained.
Under rules effective from 2 October 2026, student visa applicants to Australia need an exemption to include partners or dependent children (Reyhan Aviseno/Unsplash)
Soft power or revenue raising: overseas campuses won’t build ties without a public purpose.
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What are Australia’s offshore university campuses for?What are Australia’s offshore university campuses for?
While writing my undergraduate thesis in 2009 on the politics behind Australia’s immigration reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, I came across an episode in Gwenda Tavan’s (Opens in new window)The Long, Slow Death of White Australia that has stayed with me. Arthur Tange, secretary of Australia’s Department of External Affairs from 1954 to 1965, once suggested (Opens in new window) that the Department of Immigration send an officer to visit Australia’s diplomatic posts in Asia. He wanted Immigration to see what the White Australia policy meant for diplomats defending it in countries Australia wanted closer ties with.
Australia’s current policies and politics are profoundly different. But as debate over immigration intensified and Canberra tightened student visa rules, Tange’s predicament came back to mind. Do similar tensions now arise between officials managing Australia’s borders and those managing its relationships abroad? Home Affairs can defend tighter settings as protecting program integrity and curbing visa hopping. But how much more explaining must Australian diplomats do in countries whose students Australia has spent years encouraging to come?
International students can be economically valuable and politically inconvenient.
Under rules (Opens in new window) effective from 2 October 2026, student visa applicants need an exemption to include partners or dependent children. Days earlier, a Guardian Essential poll (Opens in new window) put One Nation at 25% of the primary vote, while 62% supported preventing most international students from bringing families.
International students can be economically valuable and politically inconvenient. Australia recorded about $55 billion (Opens in new window) in education-related exports in 2025. Yet universities know how quickly priorities change. During the pandemic, public universities were excluded (Opens in new window) from JobKeeper. For 2026, Canberra set (Opens in new window) a national planning level and provider allocations for new international students.
At the same time, Australian universities are moving closer to students by expanding their offshore presence. In September, the University of Western Australia opened in Mumbai during a Western Australian trade mission. Chennai followed in October. UWA committed about $80 million (Opens in new window) of its own funds. Flinders (Opens in new window), La Trobe (Opens in new window) and Western Sydney (Opens in new window) universities have also announced plans for campuses in India, although their opening schedules remain subject to change.
The data identify 37 selected offshore campuses across 13 countries and territories: 26 operating, seven closed and four planned. India has six operating campuses and another three planned, while Malaysia accounts for six current or former ventures. The count excludes education and research centres and partner teaching sites, whose ownership, institutional permanence and degree-delivery arrangements differ from those of offshore campuses.
The status categories matter. Operating campuses show where universities have established a physical offshore presence, while planned campuses reveal where the next round of expansion is being attempted. Closures warn against treating offshore education as an easy substitute for onshore enrolment.
India’s concentration of operating and planned campuses sharpens the irony. Australian universities are bringing their degrees closer to Indian students just as Canberra makes it harder for many of them to bring their families to Australia. India is not covered by the nationality-based exemption available to eligible ASEAN and certain Pacific applicants; Indian applicants must qualify under another exemption, such as doctoral study.
UNSW Asia closed (Opens in new window) in Singapore in 2007 after enrolments fell far below expectations, despite host-government support. Charles Sturt University’s Ontario campus operated from 2005 until July 2015 (Opens in new window). Other offshore campuses closed in Malaysia, Fiji, South Africa and Dubai. Monash South Africa operated from 2001 until it was sold (Opens in new window) in 2019.
These cases show that offshore campuses depend on demand, regulation, partnerships and universities’ willingness to sustain financial and institutional risk.
Nor can they replace the experience of studying in Australia. In 2024, 107,437 students (Opens in new window) studied Australian higher education courses offshore, compared with 481,851 onshore. Of the offshore group, 47,498 studied at overseas campuses. An Australian degree closer to home can widen access, but it changes where students form friendships, encounter institutions and build professional networks.
Indeed, Canberra is not starting from nothing. Its international education strategy (Opens in new window) supports diversified offshore delivery, while government agencies advocate for market access and oversee quality. What remains less developed is a strategy covering the full life of these campuses, including why particular ventures merit support, what they should do after opening and how universities should manage withdrawal.
This does not require Canberra to rescue every commercially unviable venture. It requires treating offshore campuses as potential infrastructure for education statecraft, rather than merely as commercially driven extensions of individual universities. They can provide durable places for researchers, students and local institutions to work together. Without a clearer public purpose, however, their contribution to Australia’s regional relationships will remain incidental.
Indonesia already hosts three operating offshore campuses, making it a practical test. The two governments have a framework (Opens in new window) for higher education and research cooperation. It could support research priorities set jointly by Indonesian and Australian partners and enable more Australian students to study alongside Indonesian peers. Success should be measured not only by enrolments, but also by what local institutions can build and what Australian universities bring back into their own teaching and research.
As Canberra tightens entry to Australia, its universities are taking Australian degrees abroad. That opens markets, though not every venture will survive. It could also sustain relationships across the region, but only if Canberra treats offshore campuses as instruments of education statecraft rather than merely private export ventures. The question is no longer simply where Australian universities open campuses, but what Australia wants them to be for.
About the author
Hangga Fathana
Hangga Fathana is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at Universitas Islam Indonesia, with more than 15 years of experience teaching Australian politics and foreign policy.
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