The purpose of this report is to better understand the impact of international students on the Australian economy, focusing in particular on the effect of potential reductions in higher education enrolments. International education is an Australian export success story. From a small base it has now become Australia’s third largest export sector behind coal and iron ore, and is the largest service export sector in the economy, worth around $18 billion in 2009. There has been rapid growth in recent years in the international education sector (see Table 1), with student numbers almost doubling over the five years to 2009. The growth has been distributed across the sector (except Schools), with both the VET (299%) and ELICOS (119%) segments experiencing especially rapid growth since 2004. The higher education sector has seen 51% growth in enrolments between 2004 and 2009, coming off an established base. .
