NSW plan to return up to 10,000 international students this year

NSW has a bold proposal to process up to 300 foreign students a week through quarantine and return them to universities.

The University of Sydney. Picture: istock

NSW is pushing ahead of other states with a bid to return up to 10,000 international students this year, and has invited tenders from accommodation providers for 600 quarantine places for arriving students.

A NSW government tender document, posted on Wednesday, says that the state earned nearly $15bn a year in export income from international students prior to the pandemic and “we estimate in 2021 we have already lost one third of our international student base.”

“The return of international students as soon as possible is vital for retaining jobs in our education sector, and for the economy more broadly,” the document says.

With a 600 student capacity, the planned new quarantine facilities — to be located in or near the Sydney CBD — would be able to handle a maximum intake of about 300 students a week for a two week quarantine period.

Depending on utilisation, it is likely 5000 to 10,000 international students could return to NSW this year under the planned scheme.

The tender appears to have been designed to exactly match the spare capacity of the student accommodation industry in NSW. Expressions of interest must be lodged by April 12 and only student accommodation providers who meet quarantine requirements are invited to apply.

Furthermore, the 600 student quarantine capacity asked for in the tender documents is a virtual match for the 592 places which the student accommodation industry told the federal and state governments last month that it could to provide in NSW for quarantine in empty student accommodation buildings.

The capacity would be additional to the current hotel quarantine facilities in NSW for up to 3,000 international traveller arrivals each week.

“A solution is required to identify a manageable, ongoing number of regular arrivals outside of the 3,000 per weekly cap that would sit alongside the current quarantine hotel model applying the same protocols and processes and led by NSW Police and Health,” the document says.

It is understood that the returning students would be spread over 11 NSW-based universities, plus major private higher education providers in the state, and NSW TAFE.

The new scheme is good news for many international students at NSW universities such as Hira Ghumman, a UNSW medical student who was stranded in her native Canada and could not do the required clinical component of her course from abroad.

Those arriving under the NSW plan would not be new students starting courses, but would be those who are part way through their degree. This means they already hold student visas and are ready to travel to Australian without delay.

NSW universities welcomed the move. Nicole Brigg, chair of the group of deputy vice chancellors (international) in NSW said they were “really pleased to see something tangible and substantial starting to happen”. She said NSW universities currently had over 40,000 international students enrolled from offshore, trying to get to Australia.

The NSW government is going ahead with the scheme despite the pessimism expressed by federal Education Minister Alan Tudge who, in a speech this week, set the beginning of 2022 as the date when he was “hopeful” students could return to Australia in larger numbers.

But Mr Tudge also repeated the federal government’s offer to states and territories for them to bring back students in “small, phased pilots” which would be permitted if they had a plan for quarantining students without affecting their capacity to process returning Australians, and if the plan was approved by their chief medical officer.

The NSW plan is more ambitious than a “small, phased pilot” but otherwise is expected to meet Canberra’s criteria.

However the new program not as big as the earlier NSW plan to return 25,000 students from mid last year which was quashed by the large COVID-19 outbreak in Victoria. A second scheme to bring back 1000 students a week was cancelled in December after the COVID outbreak which locked down Sydney’s northern beaches.

International Education Association of Australia CEO Phil Honeywood welcomed the NSW government move saying it was “proof of life for the return of international students” which the higher education sector had been looking for.

“The NSW premier is to be congratulated for having the political will to rise above the bureaucratic obstacles to ensure that Australian jobs, and accommodation providers are given priority. On equity grounds students who are well into their professional courses also deserve the right to complete their studies,” he said.

South Australia is also well advanced in planning for a pilot scheme to return students. However Victoria, which is second only the NSW in the number of international students it hosts, is lagging in its efforts to return students and revive the international education industry which used to be the state’s number one export.

The only jurisdiction to have brought students in so far under a pilot scheme is the Northern Territory, which returned 69 students to Darwin in November last year.