Some universities fear losing up to a quarter of their international enrolments with the federal education minister and Victorian premier saying it will be nearly “impossible” for foreign students to return in large numbers this year.
RMIT University in Melbourne has seen a drop of approximately 25% in new international student applications compared to the same time last year, and Australia’s arrivals cap remains reduced.
On Friday, the federal education minister, Alan Tudge, said it would be “very difficult” for significant numbers of students to return to Australia in 2021.
The Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, earlier in the week said it would be “impossible” to have “tens of thousands” of students coming into Victoria this year while thousands of Australians remain overseas.
Multiple universities told Guardian Australia that the continued shut-out of international students would harm the Australian economy, as well as universities’ future research capacity.
Earlier this month, universities said they hoped international students could return to class by the second half of 2021.
On Friday, the deputy vice-chancellor (international) of the University of Technology Sydney, Iain Watt, said Australian society as a whole “will be poorer for the absence of international students”.
“While the impacts of delays will be significant on UTS and the higher education sector, the impacts on the wider Australian economy – in retail, hospitality – will be much larger,” he said.
A spokeswoman for the University of Sydney said the “uncertainty” of the latest comments meant students could move to competing universities in Canada or the United Kingdom.
“Like all organisations, we’re adapting as best as we can as this pandemic unfolds. The forecast for the year ahead remains uncertain,” she said. “It’s clear applicants remain keen to come to Australia but are delaying making a final commitment.
“If countries like Canada and the UK command a significant market share now, then that might have long-term consequences for Australia, which would compromise Australia’s economic recovery once borders reopen.”
A spokeswoman for the Australian National University said one option could be to quarantine students in student accommodation.
“We’ve already demonstrated that we can successfully return students to study in Canberra using quarantine arrangements in on-campus student accommodation, including students from domestic hotspots and international students in the early days of Covid-19,” she said. “So quarantining in on-campus accommodation is one of the options we are exploring to enable the return of international students in 2021.”
On Friday, Tudge tweeted that he wanted students “back in Australia as soon as possible” but that it would be done “without impacting Australians wanting to come home”.
“It’s very difficult to predict … we’re really taking it week by week and month by month,” he told ABC radio. “Obviously, a big factor in all of this is the vaccine and how effective that will be. Should that vaccine be effective, then it really does make a big difference, and we may be able to take numbers in again.”
According to data from the Department of Education, Skills and Employment, approximately 130,000 students who have already started their studies in Australia are now stranded in other countries due to Covid-19 border restrictions.
As of 10 January, 39% of the 350,000 people who hold an Australian student visa were not in the country.
A spokesperson for the University of New South Wales said the international education sector contributed more than $40bn to the Australian economy and supported 250,000 jobs.
“The university has over 10,000 international students studying overseas and we continue to focus on supporting these students during this difficult time,” a spokesman said.
The University of Sydney said the safe return of international students should be a “national priority”.
“This is for our future research capacity, vital to Australia’s recovery and sovereignty, and the current generation of early and mid-career researchers our nation can’t afford to lose. The ongoing and direct impact on businesses from the lost custom international students provide – in all sorts of related sectors including retail, construction, tourism, hospitality and real estate – is also a prime concern.”
An RMIT spokesperson said it was working closely with the Victorian government on “a state-wide approach that will allow international students to enter Victoria”. The University of Melbourne said it was speaking with the federal and state governments.
The Victorian government previously said it was working with the federal government to bring returning students back to the state, and Phil Honeywood, the CEO of the International Education Association of Australia, said universities and students had offered to pay for quarantine at no cost to the taxpayer.
In November, 63 international students from five countries flew into the Northern Territory to resume their studies at Charles Darwin University.
“The frustration is the Northern Territory government were able to prove it can be done,” Honeywood told Guardian Australia earlier this month. “None of [the students] had Covid. All of them went straight from the airport to quarantine and they have been happily studying.”
Sai Anam, an international student who was studying in Melbourne, told Guardian Australia on Tuesday that he had been suddenly shut out of Australia after three years of study, and after spending more than $50,000 on education and visa costs.
The 27-year-old had lived in Australia since 2017 and left for a 10-day trip to visit his parents in India in March 2020.
He has since been waiting to return to a 12-month postgraduate course at the Australian Computer Society, and hopes to become a permanent resident.
On Monday, Andrews said he would continue to work towards bringing students back, but there was a “capacity issue” with so many Australians wanting to return as well.
“I’m not pleased about that, international education is our biggest export. But I just again say the government is not spending hours and hours trying to make something that I think is frankly not possible, possible.
“Tens and tens of thousands of international students coming back here is going to be incredibly challenging if not impossible, during this year. I take no joy in saying that I’ve tried to be as frank as possible about that.
“Even if there was every Aussie that wanted to come home and already made it home. There’s a big capacity issue here … there are limits to how many people you can safely quarantine when your risk threshold is so high.”
