Indonesia is Australia’s biggest neighbour, with about 286 million people. But in 2025 it was only the 9th biggest source of international students in Australia, behind countries like Nepal, which has about a tenth of Indonesia’s population. As an Indonesian student in Melbourne, I wanted to see how Indonesian student numbers have changed, where Indonesians study, and how easy it is for them to get a student visa.

1. Indonesia is falling behind its Asian neighbours

Source: Department of Education (2026); World Bank (2026).

In 2005, Nepal sent fewer students per person than Indonesia. By 2025 it was sending more than 20 times as many. Vietnam and the Philippines have similar incomes to Indonesia but send about four times as many students for the size of their population.

2. But Indonesian numbers are growing while the rest of the market shrinks

Source: Department of Education (2026). Genuine Student test date: Kattoor (2024).

Both lines dropped when the borders closed. After they reopened, Indonesian numbers came back faster and stayed higher, even after the Genuine Student test started.

3. Indonesians take two paths: VET in Sydney, university in Melbourne

Source: Department of Education (2026). “Other” includes English language courses, schools and non-award courses.

NSW has the most Indonesian students, and most of them are in VET. Victoria is the opposite, with about three in four Indonesian students at university.

4. Getting a visa: easy for university, much harder for VET

Source: Department of Home Affairs (2026); Kattoor (2024). University includes postgraduate research.

Indonesian university applicants have done better than the average every year, and almost all of them still get a visa. In VET, Indonesia has been above the average since 2017-18, but its grant rate fell from 89% in 2022-23 to 63% in 2023-24, the year the Genuine Student test started, and it was lower again in 2025-26.

5. VET is harder for every country, and more Indonesians study VET

Source: Department of Home Affairs (2026).

Indonesian university applicants are approved almost as often as applicants from China and Malaysia. In VET, the grant rate drops for every country. This hits Indonesia more than most countries because 46% of Indonesian students study VET, compared with 34% of all other international students.

Conclusion

More Indonesians are studying in Australia, but for a country of about 286 million people the numbers are still small, and Indonesia has fallen behind most of its Asian neighbours. The Australian Government says it welcomes more students from Indonesia, and from 2026 public universities can apply for more international student places if they show stronger links with Indonesia and Southeast Asia (Australian Embassy Indonesia, 2025). The university path is already open, with almost every Indonesian applicant getting a visa. The problem is VET. In 2025-26, 87% of Indonesian student visa refusals were VET applications. If Australia wants more students from its closest big neighbour, I think the VET visa path is the place to look.

Data notes

The student and visa data come as Excel pivot tables. I exported the December year-to-date figures (the full year) for students and the primary applicants for visas to CSV files, and left out 2026-27 because it only covers two months. Student numbers are enrolments, so one student in two courses is counted twice. The grant rate is visas granted divided by visas granted plus refused.

Acknowledgements

I used Gemini (Google, 2026) to review my spelling and grammar, to help to recheck my references format and to support with the debugging process of any code error. I reviewed the suggestions and only used the ones I needed, to make sure all following the requirements from the assignment.

The story structure, chart design and interactivity follow the course modules (Baglin, 2026), and the animated bubble chart is based on the Gapminder example from the Week 11 class. The charts were made with ggplot2 (Wickham, 2016) and plotly (Sievert, 2020), and the World Bank data was loaded with the WDI package (Arel-Bundock, 2022).

References

Arel-Bundock, V. (2022). WDI: World development indicators and other World Bank data (Version 2.7.8) [R package]. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=WDI

Australian Embassy Indonesia. (2025, August 8). Australia welcomes more students from Indonesia [Media release]. https://indonesia.embassy.gov.au/jakt/MR25_071.html

Baglin, J. (2026). Data visualisation and communication. RMIT University. https://data-visualisation.stem.melbourne/

Department of Education. (2026). International student monthly summary and data tables: December 2025 all data [Data set]. Australian Government. https://www.education.gov.au/node/12669

Department of Home Affairs. (2026). Student visa program: BP0015 student visa grant rates [Data set]. data.gov.au. https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/student-visas

Google. (2026). Gemini [Large language model]. https://gemini.google.com

Kattoor, V. (2024, April 10). Genuine temporary entrant (GTE) requirement replaced with genuine student (GS). Roam Migration Law. https://www.roammigrationlaw.com/news/gte-requirement-replaced-with-gs/

Sievert, C. (2020). Interactive web-based data visualization with R, plotly, and shiny. Chapman and Hall/CRC. https://plotly-r.com

Wickham, H. (2016). ggplot2: Elegant graphics for data analysis. Springer. https://ggplot2.tidyverse.org

World Bank. (2026). World development indicators [Data set]. https://databank.worldbank.org/source/world-development-indicators