In recent decades, the number of globally mobile students in higher education has grown rapidly, arguably as a direct outcome of the increasing commodification of international education. Using Australian higher education as an illustrative case, this paper suggest that this commodification is best viewed as involving set of policy processes relating to the ways in which higher education institutions are now funded and governed. It shows how the commodification of social mobility has thus reconstituted the character of higher education, becoming a site for the formation of an emerging transnational elite class. It argues that this shift has made it difficult to imagine a more ethically and culturally productive form of internationalization, beyond the logic of the market once the pandemic no longer prevents the mobility of students across national borders.