Stuck in transit: international student update

The pandemic has hit the international education sector hard. Over 100,000 international students were stuck overseas when Australia's borders first closed in February 2020. New international students are unable to enter the country.

Despite numerous proposals, almost all efforts to bring back international students have been unsuccessful.

This policy brief examines these issues using data from the Department of Education, Skills and Employment (DESE), the Department of Home Affairs (DHA), and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). This research considers the impact of online enrolments.

Key points:

• A third academic year without new international students is on track to reduce the size of Australia's international education sector by $19.8 billion, from $40.3 billion in 2019 to $20.5 billion in 2022.
• The value of offshore international students studying online increased from $9 million in 2019 to $3.3 billion in 2020. However, the bulk of this increase has come from currently enrolled students displaced by the coronavirus, not new students.
• In November 2020, only 16,916 new students had enrolled while outside Australia, 3.4% of all enrolments. This suggests international students are not enrolling online in sufficient quantities to arrest the decline in overall international student enrolments.
• The fate of Australia's international education sector rests on Australia's border policy. What will be most important to any recovery is the rate at which international students can enter the country.