Prime Minister Scott Morrison has announced a major easing of border restrictions today that will see over 200,000 visa holders including international students, skilled migrants and refugees return to Australia in coming months. From December 1 fully vaccinated visa holders who have tested negative to COVID-19 will be allowed back into the country without having to apply for an exemption.
This announcement has significant implications for the higher education sector, following years of falling profits, disruption to degrees and general uncertainty about a future without international students. The absence of thousands of international students in Australia has been felt more widely, with knock-on effects to wage growth and skilled-labour shortages.
A survey by student marketing and recruitment firm IDP Connect found that while a large number of prospective students were still considering Australia for their studies, a significant market share has been lost to other major exporters of education.
Across the past two years Australia’s share of global demand dropped by around 5 points to 12%, with the UK and Canada holding mostly steady and the US seeing significant increases. This impact has been felt more keenly in some places than others, with India for example halving their market share in Australia from more than 20% to 9% since the pandemic began.
The strict closure of the Australian border throughout the pandemic is largely to blame for this shift, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the reopening of the border will spark an immediate return to the numbers of international students who once sought to study in Australia.
Will international students return?
It is clear that damage has been done to Australia’s tertiary education sector, but what is yet to be seen is whether the pandemic-related factors that turned students away from Australia will be easily reversed once the border reopens.
Many migrant workers and post-graduation international students have reported becoming disillusioned with Australia after struggling to get work due to their visa status, and a general feeling of their contribution being unappreciated.
This sentiment, paired with the difficulties Australian international students had when their studies were disrupted by the pandemic, may have impacts that extend beyond the pandemic itself. Confidence in Australia’s border remaining open, as well as vaccine mandates, may also play a part in international students’ decision making.
However, Andrew Norton, professor in the practice of higher education policy at the Australian National University, says we should be optimistic about the return of international students in semester 1 of 2022.
Norton acknowledged the potentially negative sentiment that exists for some students who were forced to abandon their studies in Australia, but said that while “we have lost some market share, we can look forward to a substantial intake of international students in semester 1 of 2022″.
He flagged that there is still some uncertainty about arrival rules, and the affordability of flights into Australia that may have further impact, but that we should still expect a strong return to form.
While this will be welcome news for universities, the sector’s reliance on international markets came into focus during the pandemic, and will likely remain in the discussion if high numbers of international enrolments don’t materialise. The higher education sector is estimated to have lost $2 billion in revenue in 2021 alone, and major recovery efforts will be required to get the industry back on track.
Historically our third biggest export, international students are worth $40 billion, and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told Sky News this morning that they “play an essential role in our economy”.
As such, there’s a lot weighing on getting students back through the door in 2022, and only time will tell if the past two years have left too much uncertain for international students to return.
Historically our third biggest export, international students are worth $40 billion, and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg told Sky News this morning that they “play an essential role in our economy”.
Thus spoke a Treasurer who changed the Jobkeeper legislation three times in order to exclude universities. The hypocrisy is breath-taking.
The idiot inadequacy defies credulity.
What we really need is a govt that values education. The current libs/nats despise universities because their denizens think a bit and tend to choose not to vote for the coalition. Worse than that they train people to think and trained thinkers tend not to vote for the coalition.
The coalition wont do anything to support unis so they may be thrown back to milking this particular cash cow pretty hard despite the risks to both themselves and the economy as a whole.
Hockey & Abbott are alumni of Sydney uni – ’nuff said.
You really, rilly should drop the protestations… “I don’t …insert…”
Or invite Gertrude’s apt response.
Seems to be the give away, reflecting the neo-narcissism we see in public aka street demonstrations….
They’re funding the humanities a while lot less.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/oct/06/humanities-students-will-pay-up-to-113-more-for-uni-courses-after-centre-alliance-backs-changes
It irks me to concur.
What course are you talking about?
No, it’s because humanities develop high level skills of analysis, evaluation and synthesis (aka Bloom’s Taxonomy) which have been the basis of mainstream progress through teaching, learning and assessment; same applied in science and research; a threat to the status quo.
This is opposed to the imported US need to dumb down education and society by focusing upon the basic skills of knowing, understanding and application (plus following orders… from God and conservative ‘leaders’).
So you do not understand anything much about education, but simply complain about ‘woke’, and what is ‘woke’? I understand NewsCorp, LNP, Hansen etc. do not like people developing, get over it.
You present ‘believe in wokery’ as a belief system aka Barnaby Joyce who does similar claiming climate science is a ‘belief system’ of the woke left.
It’s all about ‘muddying the waters’ aka climate science and any informed analysis, confusing people and creating doubts round science and learning (also use din the US nd UK), hardly an original tactic.
PS: You are putting an admirable effort today with your shift, to derail comments and threads, commencing nine hours ago?
Really, ‘menial’ work, on other threads you complain of overeducated doing lower level jobs, yet you then claim to have attended a Go8 university?
Further, you also confirm like DPM Joyce that science or climate change is a ‘belief’ system that you adhere to?
Neither Drew nor anyone else is preventing you from commenting here or advocating that you don’t, but you seem to want a free pass for your unsubstantiated claims.
Occasionally you are correct – stopped clock syndrome.
It’s also imported Koch’ian agitprop to attack education, learning, free speech (under guise of men’s rights) and especially science research e.g. climate science, and empowerment of youth versus a return to ‘western civilisation’, rote learning and obeying authority….
Citation please.
That document doesn’t come from a sociology department. And nowhere does it suggest one should use the word “opressed” instead of “disadvantaged”. You haven’t actually read it, have you?
It is one thing to have ‘read’ it – as Lady Camilla of HotAir may (sic!) have done – but understanding is a big/quantum, leap.
The international student ‘market’ may well be in long term decline, everywhere. Some years ago, a foreign education was a rare status symbol in some Asian countries. Now it has become much more common, the comparative advantage is lost. There is also the factor that Asian universities are themselves improving.
Exactly, reflects increasing global mobility that most people demand and take for granted pre Covid, for themselves not others e.g. workers, students etc.. EU nations, with far superior national PR, have caught up and in some cases overtaken the Anglosphere at their own game, while Asian nations are also becoming important study destinations.
Chinese students were 30% of the international cohort. Will they return to study in Australia given Australia’s bellicose attitude toward China?
As it is a means a fast track to Oz PR and eventually p/p, yes.
Unlikely, Chinese numbers were in decline years before Covid, many now apparently prefer other choices e.g. NZ, Canada, EU etc. who all have same carrots to offer…. we are not unique.
A good question billie. I have been privately teaching kids English here in China for the past 12 years or so and one of my students, a girl, who I have been tutoring for the last 8 years and is now in high school, told me very recently that she still wants to study at Sydney Uni despite all the BS. Her parents took her to Australia for a few weeks in early 2019 to check the place out and look at the suggestions I had given them. The family was impressed especially the girl. As she has a couple of years of high school left to complete before she can graduate, we are hopeful in that time things will settle down and she can realize her dream. This student’s English by the way is right up there. Most of the kids here are smart, keen students and if given an opportunity will excel in whatever they do, the OZ “politicians” are a lunatic lot, hell-bent on following Geriatric Uncle Sam to perdition it would seem.
“…a girl,
whoWHOM I have been tutoring for the last 8 years and is now in high school…”Did you not cover the dative case?
Or intransitive verbs – at which one can excel?
200,000 IN COMING MONTHS!!! That’s insane.
Scott Morrison is going to flood the place!!!
Will no-one think of the already clogged commuter traffic systems?
No it’s not, and details have not been released on which visa types, occupations, sectors or postcodes; backgrounded by ignoring the baby boomer bubble departing the workforce over the next five years to be followed by lower fertility in the permanent population.
Traffic congestion, Morrison, Berejiklian et al., applied to Sydney pre last election; in fact the old chestnut that Nixon used in the ’70s about immigration/population (no doubt informed by ZPG) but straight from the old eugenics movement…..