University of Canberra and Australian National University fly in 300 foreign students

Two universities in the ACT are planning to fly overseas students back to Australia to resume their studies next month.

Australian National University students Qingyan Zhuan, 19, left, and Fenghua Chen, 20, at the ANU campus in Canberra. Picture: Sean Davey

More than 300 foreign students are set to be flown into Canberra next month and quarantined in hotels to help revive Australia’s hammered education industry.

In a national first, the University of Canberra and the Aust­ralian National University will organise a hub flight from an international airport (Singapore is among several options) to Canberra Airport late next month for postgraduate, honours and final-year undergraduate students.

The universities’ pilot prog­ram for bringing back foreign stud­ents has been given the green light by ACT Chief Minister Andrew­ Barr and praised by Scott Morrison. It will give the ACT a head start in re-energising its universities following the pandemic.

“We need to do these things safely; we have to be very considera­te of the appropriate quarantine measures,” Mr Barr said on Wednesday.

“We think they can be safely managed … we’ll do a pilot, we’ll assess it. The universities are our largest export industries and employer­s in our cities.”

University of Canberra vice-chancellor Paddy Nixon said the plan showed the commitment of Australian universities to foreign students and provided an assurance they would have as much face-to-face teaching on campus as possible.

“It’s no accident that we’re moving ahead with this, as we’re able to do more face-to-face learning with small (tutorials) and labs — the sort of lessons that our postgraduate and honours stud­ents spend most of their time doing,” he told The Australian.

“At UC, we have about 400 such students overseas and we’ll now go to them and find out if they want to come back to campus­ and how best we can get them here. It will be a single hub point but they will be students from different countries.”

The ACT and South Australia are leading the nation in getting international students back, with national cabinet considering plans to move toward­s getting small batches of foreign pupils back by next month. NSW, Victoria­ and Queensland are also developing pilot programs.

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy is working with both universities to develop their testing and quarantine procedures, The Australian understands.

ANU vice-chancellor Brian Schmidt said while the students would need to be quarantined for two weeks in hotels — with costs divided between students, the universities and the ACT government — they would begin ­learning immediately. “We have a whole academic and pastoral program set up so they won’t be ­sitting in hotels idly,” he said.

“We’re not making any money out of these students coming back from overseas. They are all paying fees already. This is us following through our commitment to them over the years.”

ANU students Qingyan Zhuan, 19, and Fenghua Chen, 20, are looking forward to seeing their classmates from China again. “I have really missed my friends in China and it’s hard to really keep in contact,” Ms Qingyan said.

Ms Fenghua said more international students would make both study and life easier, as “you need to be together to connect, to support each other”.

“I’m glad I was in Canberra when the pandemic happened, but it will be much better when ­people start arriving from overseas again,” she said.