Australia’s onshore international education sector is forecast to grow from 650,000 enrolments today to 940,000 by 2025
(CAGR 3.8 %).
GROWTH AND OPPORTUNITY IN AUSTRALIAN EDUCATION
Thailand, Nepal, Malaysia, Brazil and South Korea. Much of the growth in onshore learner enrolments will be driven by Asia – in particular China, India, Nepal, Vietnam and Thailand.
Over the period to 2025, the fastest growing sectors in onshore international education are expected to be higher education and VET (in percentage terms). By 2025, these two sectors are expected to account for 72 per cent of all onshore international learner enrolments.
China is set to remain Australia’s largest source market for onshore enrolments in 2025 and is expected to occupy the largest number of higher education, schooling and ELICOS enrolments. The largest number of VET onshore enrolments in 2025 are forecast to come from India (16 %), Thailand (8%) and South Korea (7%).
How large is the borderless opportunity available to Australia?
The borderless market is one that is in many respects untapped and without precedent. It is partly about channels and methods that are well known – such as international campuses and partnerships – but it is far more about those which are still being discovered. Even with the greatest foresight, its characterisation a decade from now is likely to be far different to today’s.
Reliable quantification of its scale is correspondingly challenging, but some broad parameters are instructive. Defining the potential market (narrowly) according to the participation rates of 25-64 year olds in formal and non-formal education12, applied to the 29 key source markets of interest to the Australian international education sector there are projected to be in excess of one billion ‘in scope’ learners in 2025.
The share of this market which Australia captures is a function of a raft of factors, many of which are not amendable to quantitative forecasting.
The factors so instrumental to our onshore successes – like geographic proximity and the Australian lifestyle experience – will have considerably less bearing, suggesting our onshore market share is unlikely to be matched in the borderless realm.
Similarly, Australia’s current share of borderless provision serves as a relatively poor indicator of future performance in what is a vastly different borderless future.
Austrade commissioned Deloitte Access Economics and EduWorld to explore the opportunity for the future growth of the international education sector. Growth and Opportunity in Australian International Education seeks to form an evidence base for potential growth in both onshore education delivery and borderless delivery (in-market and online). The research considers 29 markets, with the summary findings set out below.
The research considers ‘how’ opportunity might emerge, highlighting that the challenge now is to refine that opportunity into its most prospective form for Australia based on relative size and sector, and to create the right supply-side conditions to enable the sector to pursue these opportunities.
Austrade is taking forward this refinement of opportunities as part of work under AIE2025. The findings of the report may help to stimulate the sector to consider their own target markets and opportunities for further growth and/or diversification.
Key conclusions of the report
The international education sector’s contribution to export earnings is expected to almost double to in excess of $33 billion by 2025 (DELOITTE, 2015). The top eight source markets for onshore international learner enrolments across all sectors in 2025 are expected to be China, India, Vietnam,