International students flock to Australian universities. Here is what they study

After watching the film Kangaroo Jack as a six-year-old in Guatemala, he told his mother the country would one day be his home. At 18 he came down under to travel. At 28 he enrolled in a master’s degree in event management at the UTS Business School.

Now in his final semester, Guzman has high hopes for the future. He dreams of working in Formula 1 racing, and meanwhile is developing his entrepreneurship skills.

He hopes to stay in Australia after graduating. The opportunities, he says, are unparallelled.

“I know that in Australia, if I work hard and I put effort in, I can achieve more.”

Guzman is one of hundreds of thousands of international students who come to Australian universities to pursue their dreams.

Since 2021, international student enrolments at Australian universities increased by 46.2 per cent – from 314,619 to 460,090.

Those numbers have been a primary target of the federal government’s plans, revealed on Thursday, to curb net migration from about 300,000 to 225,000 next year. It aims to curb the number of international students by targeting visa hopping and by reducing the influx of family members.

The most popular broad field of study for international students enrolled in Australian universities was management and commerce, accounting for 120,136 enrolments in 2026. Information technology ranked second, followed by society and culture.

The most studied management and commerce disciplines were business and management (61,222 enrolments), followed by accounting (14,566 enrolments).

Speaking before the migration changes were unveiled, International Education Association of Australia chief executive Phil Honeywood said those degrees had broad appeal to international neighbours, offering in-demand skills taught in a native English setting.

“The overwhelming number of overseas students doing such courses come from family businesses where the parents would like their child to learn business practices in a native English-speaking country, and … go home to run the family business or to start in a larger corporation.”

Honeywood said on Thursday the reforms were “really a mixed bag” for international students but the changes were unlikely to impact the types of degrees that were most popular.

Guzman, who hopes to remain in Australia after his degree, says the variety of skills taught in business degrees made them desirable for domestic and international students.

“People just want to gain … skills for management and skills for HR and skills for marketing,” he says. “You have more options whenever you’re looking for a job.”