In an earlier post I argued that the government’s plans to cap international student numbers, including by education provider and course, would cause actual enrolments to fall well below the official maximum number.

This is due to the inherent weaknesses of bureaucratic systems of student place allocation. Even when meeting demand is a goal the limited information held by central planners, and the long time lags between allocations and enrolments, will cause student places to remain unused.

This post proposes a partial remedy to this problem, a cap-and-trade system for international student places.

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