The Department of Education and Training has recently released higher education enrolment statistics for 2017. These show a striking increase in the share of commencing overseas students to all commencing students for all Australian universities from 26.7 per cent in 2016 to 28.9 per cent in 2017. Growth in this share in the Group of Eight (Go8) universities has been particularly rapid with several reaching over 40 per cent of total commencing enrolments in 2017.

This report details this expansion and discusses some of the implications. It concludes that university claims that increased enrolments of overseas student do not detract from domestic enrolments are not correct, especially in the case of the Go8 universities.