FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 2026
September 17 – The Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA), the peak body representing Australia’s 570,000 postgraduate students, welcomes the Government’s decision to exempt PhD candidates from the new restrictions on international students bringing family to Australia. Announced by the Home Affairs Minister, Tony Burke, at the National Press Club today, the exemption recognises what CAPA has argued for years: PhD candidates are critical to Australia’s sovereign capability.
As outlined by Minister Burke, higher-degree researchers are “in a very different circumstance of life.”
“This is the right call, and we thank the Minister for listening to years of advocacy by CAPA, the Group of Eight and Universities Australia. Postgraduate researchers are not tourists with a study visa, they are adults, mostly in their thirties, relocating their whole lives to do three or four years of serious research which benefits Australians. Recognising that they should keep their families with them is common sense,” said CAPA National President, Jesse Gardner-Russell.
The postgraduate research sector has the highest ratio of family members to students of any student visa category: 61 dependants for every 100 students, four times the coursework rate. That is because research candidates are older and have families: 90 per cent are aged 25 or over and 59 per cent are 30 or over. To illustrate this, 44% of postgraduate research student’s secondary visa applicants are children, versus 23% for coursework.
Asking a 35-year-old to spend four years apart from their children is not feasible for attracting top research talent.
However, CAPA reiterates that the exemption must cover every research candidate, not just PhD candidates. Research masters candidates and early-career research graduates are in exactly the same position and need some certainty in order to deliver quality research for Australians.
“The exemption has to reach every research candidate, not just PhD candidates. Our research masters students and research graduates relocate families and build careers here just as PhD candidates do. They need the same level of clarity,” said CAPA Vice President, Richard Lee.
Critically, the exemption protects international research candidate recruitment, whilst Australia’s domestic research recruitment languishes. In 2024, for the first time, a majority of students commencing a research degree in Australia were international, 50.6 per cent – as domestic enrollments have been consistently dropping. Over the past decade domestic research enrolments dropped 15 per cent (Larkins, 2026), as the base PhD stipend sits at around $34,500, below the poverty line and below the national minimum wage for what is full-time work.
“An exemption keeps the door open for the world’s best researchers. If the Government values research enough to carve it out of a migration crackdown, it should value it enough to pay research candidates above the minimum wage,” said Mr Gardner-Russell.
CAPA is concerned that Masters by coursework students, who are usually in their late 20’s and early 30’s, are impacted heavily by the changes. Looking at the average age profiles of international undergraduates (88% below the age of 25) and postgraduates coursework (51% over the age of 25), CAPA estimates that family visas are primarily sought by coursework students over the age of 25. Assuming most applicants over the age of 25 are postgraduate coursework students, then postgraduate coursework would account for approximately 23,000 of the 28,831 higher education family visas granted in 2025-2026.
CAPA notes that a vocational student is about 1.8 times more likely to bring a child than a university coursework student. Vocational degrees are short courses, whereas postgraduate coursework degrees include medicine, teaching and allied health. CAPA agrees with the government that these high rates of family visas for short vocational courses needs addressing. However, CAPA calls on the government to consider exempting Masters by coursework students, particularly those who are recipients of competitive scholarships such as the Australia Awards program from the family visa ban.
CAPA calls on the Government to confirm that the exemption extends to all higher-degree-by-research candidates, including research masters, and clarify the family entitlements of research graduates, so no part of the research pipeline is left in doubt by an ambiguous carve-out. CAPA also calls for the government to lift the Research Training Program stipend to at least the national minimum wage and index it, rebuilding the domestic research pipeline that today’s exemption does not. Finally, CAPA calls on the government to consider exempting postgraduate coursework students, particularly those who receive competitive scholarships, from the family visa ban.
“The Government has accepted that research is different. Let’s focus on building a comprehensive talent pipeline for international and domestic research students,” said Mr Gardner-Russell.
ENDS
Jesse Gardner-Russell
National President
Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations Inc.
Level 1, 120 Clarendon St, Southbank, Victoria 3006
President@capa.edu.au
