Two key moves to save international education from disaster

Australia needs to take care of its international students as they face the enormous challenges of travel restrictions and an end to face-to-face classes. Photo: iStock

You can’t turn international education off and on like a tap. That’s the key thing to remember about Australia’s fourth-largest export sector, which brought in $40.4bn last year, as the coronavirus sends it hurtling towards oblivion.

Last year Australia was host to more than 750,000 international students. This year 114,000 of those expected to be here haven’t made it, mainly due to coronavirus travel restrictions. Of those who were unable to get here, 65,000 are from China, the first country to be hit by travel bans.

The 114,000 missing students have already put a large hole in activity for this year. But it gets worse. No new students will be coming to Australia in the next few months, meaning the usual influx arriving for the second half of the year won’t be arriving either.

This means about 70,000 university students and more than 100,000 vocational students who would normally have arrived during the course of the year will not.

Then there is the English-language teaching sector, which operates with short courses, one month to six months in length.

Because of its rapid turnover it faces total wipeout. Its teaching load of 180,000 students a year will cease to exist.

READ MORE: Vice-chancellors take pay cuts | Dreadful toll on students | Kiwis put us to shame | Uni fees should be higher | Unis miss out on $2bn JobKeeper support

Currently, there are well over 500,000 international students still in Australia. But we can’t be sure they will stay because conditions for their learning aren’t what they signed up for.

There is no longer face-to-face teaching. Their classes are mainly delivered through jury-rigged online education platforms, many of them hastily built in a heroic effort by teachers and lecturers, but falling short of the ideal standard in a normal world.

Will international students stay in Australia, and pay top-level fees, for this? They might choose to go home (if travel restrictions allow) to learn online from there. They might also, quite reasonably, demand fee discounts or they might decide to pause their study until this is all over.

Many will be forced home for economic reasons. The retail and hospitality jobs that international students typically hold have dried up and many are rapidly losing the means to support themselves.

By the end of this year it is possible that the number of international students left in Australia will be only a fraction of the number expected in pre-virus times.

If international education is decimated, what is lost? For a start, more than 250,000 Australian jobs that depend on the sector. Unlike the three infrastructure-intensive export industries that earn more — coal, iron ore and gas — education is a labour-intensive service industry. It creates work.

And, contrary to what some university naysayers assert, it does not only support the high salaries of vice-chancellors and their executive teams. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures show that nearly 60 per cent of the spending of international students is not for tuition fees, but spent on other goods and services in the broader economy.

That means international students deliver a $24bn boost to the Australian economy each year, outside the education sector.

Nothing can prevent a massive hit to international education revenue this year. But government can do things that will maximise the chance of it recovering next year, and avoiding a long-term decline.

The first move should be to look after the customers. International students who have lost their part-time jobs should be given income support, just like in New Zealand.

It’s the right move for humanitarian reasons, and it’s the right move for hard-headed business reasons. We need students to stay enrolled in their two- or three-year courses, not drop out.

Education is a reputation game. Asian parents, in particular, have long memories. They will remember if we neglected their children in this very anxious time. They will also repay with gratitude our acts of fairness and generosity.

Secondly, government needs to provide sufficient resources to keep the machinery of international education going. It’s a complex business, selling high-priced products that are delivered over years in another country. It has a long pipeline. Work done now on marketing and recruiting students still pays dividends up to five years down the track.

So here’s the plea to government: Don’t let the tap be shut off.