Coronavirus: University of Adelaide offers cash incentive for stranded Chinese students

A second university is offering Chinese students a financial incentiv­e to study this semester despite the coronavirus travel ban.

Sulli Qiam, 18, left, a University of Sydney student, has been in Bangkok for eight days of a two-week quarantine period before she can fly back to Australia. Picture: Jonathan Taylor

A second university is offering Chinese students a financial incentiv­e to study this semester despite the coronavirus travel ban, as the federal government prepare­s to ease the ban enough to allow some students to enter Australi­a directly from China.

On Friday, the University of Adelaide emailed its 3000 or so Chinese students caught overseas by the ban offering a “care package” worth about $5000 — a 20 per cent discount on first-­semester tuition fees plus airfare support of up to $2000, which they will be eligible for once the travel ban is lifted.

Acting on medical advice, the government is planning to allow about 1000 Chinese research stud­ents to enter directly from China in a week’s time. After that it will consider allowin­g other groups of Chinese students to fly directly to Australia, although it is not clear how the groups will be selected.

The plan to ease the ban is based on expert advice to the government which said it can consider relaxing restrictions from February 29 if coronavirus case numbers in China, outside Hubei province, do not show a “material increase”.

The government’s official expert group, the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee, also said that if epidemiological indicators remained as they were, the entry of Chinese students “would not materially increase the current low risk of importation of cases from mainland China (outside of Hubei province)”.

Meanwhile, increasing numbers of Chinese students are beating the travel ban by travelling to third countries, where they must spend a 14-day quarantine period before entering Australia.

Ben, a student enrolled at RMIT who did not want to give his full name, said he planned to fly to Australia on February 23. He said he was not confident of getting in, “but I must take the risk”.

Melbourne education consultant Gary Li, who is in Bangkok to assist Chinese students transiting to Australia, said his students did not regret choosing the third-country option because they don’t know how long the travel ban will be in force.

The Group of Eight univer­sities, where most of the 100,000 Chinese students caught by the ban are enrolled, said it wanted its students back on campus as soon as possible. Go8 chief executive Vicki Thomson said the group appreciated and welcomed the government considering the medical advice. “We will explore all options to see what can be achieved with government support,” she said.

But Ian Jacobs, vice-chancellor of Go8 university UNSW, warned against a “piecemeal relaxation” of the travel ban. “I’m sure that any relaxation would be well-intentioned but it could end up causing confusion and even more anxiety, and be very difficult to imple­ment,” he said.

The Australian Health Protection Principal Committee said in its advice to the government that students entering directly from China would “need to agree to self-isolation in Australia” and universities would need to support that.

The committee is made up of the state and territory chief health officers and is chaired by Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Brendan Murphy. In its statement, the committee also revealed that the China travel ban could be relaxed for a small number of other cases, including Year 11 and 12 school stud­ents, as long as they were not from Hubei province.

Western Sydney University this week offered its stranded Chinese students $1500 towards the cost of beating the travel ban by transiting a third country but the University of Adelaide is not encouraging that option.

But it is offering each of its stranded Chinese students a personalised study plan and will allow them to study online until June 1, when they need to be on campus to complete first semester face-to-face. The university will give late-arriving Chinese students inten­sive tutorials to help them complete their studies on time.

Additional reporting: Heidi Han