Study Melbourne — Victoria's International Student Support & Retention Platform

Study Melbourne is the Victorian Government's international-education office, housed within the Department of Jobs, Skills, Industry and Regions, running services and grant programmes aimed at attracting international students to Victoria and helping them stay, work and build careers in the state after they graduate. Its Study Melbourne Inclusion Program, running since 2015, funds community- and university-led projects on student wellbeing, safety and employability; by the mid-2020s it had funded 178 projects supporting more than 238,000 students, with 14 further projects funded in 2026 (Study Melbourne).

On the employability side, Study Melbourne runs an Improving International Student Employment Outcomes initiative built around a Commitment to Action framework, under which employers and industry bodies publicly commit to reducing bias against international graduates in recruitment and report back on progress every 6–12 months.

Victoria's international-education sector overall — of which Study Melbourne is the state's dedicated delivery and support arm — generated AU$15.9 billion for the state economy and supported around 64,000 jobs in 2024, drawing roughly 330,000 international student enrolments from more than 175 countries; in 2025 the government's AU$5 million Yes to International Students Fund backed 16 providers, including a new dual-degree pathway between RMIT Melbourne and a partner institution in India, to grow the pipeline further (Premier of Victoria; Indian Link).

These figures describe Victoria's international-education sector as a whole rather than Study Melbourne's programmes in isolation, so the scale of the state's economic and enrolment numbers cannot be attributed to the retention initiatives alone; the clearest programme-specific evidence is the Inclusion Program's project and participant counts.

Read the full analysis: https://studymelbourne.vic.gov.au/