Both New Zealand and Iceland kept death rates from COVID low, but used different strategies. While New Zealand relied on lockdowns and border closures, Iceland ramped up its testing capacity.
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Many employers are waiting just as anxiously as universities for international students to return to our shores. The students’ labour is especially important for the hospitality and care sectors.
Having international students in Australia gives us a head start in the global race to attract skilled migrants. COVID border closures that halved their numbers could have very long-term costs.
Despite the promising data on the level of student interest and applications since November, universities and governments have much work to do to restore Australia’s lost market share.
Research on the experience of Indian international students shows the importance of strong social networks for a productive and fulfilling time in Australia.
Australia’s major competitors in the international education market are already rebounding from the pandemic and have issued record numbers of student visas.
Hopes are rising that international students will be back in Australia early in 2022, but that doesn’t mean the education sector will be able to shrug off the impacts of their absence any time soon.
Events have overtaken state plans for limited numbers of international students to return. With NSW dropping quarantine for fully vaccinated arrivals, flight capacity is the final obstacle.
Universities must move swiftly to attend to students’ needs when borders reopen if Australia is to regain market share in the face of fierce global competition.
International student demand for places in Australia has fallen by a third over the course of the pandemic, while for our key competitors demand has remained stable or even increased.
If we open up the international borders before enough of the population is vaccinated, hospitals could become overwhelmed and deaths would be unacceptably high.
Lockdowns and restrictions disrupted the lives of most Australians, but the impacts on one hard-hit group, nomads, have been largely overlooked. We don’t even know how many of them there are.
Tuesday’s budget shows a reversion back to the previous policy of keeping total higher education funding broadly stable.
Top contributors
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Professor and Director, Mitchell Institute, Victoria University
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Deputy Vice-Chancellor Student and University Experience, University of Tasmania
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Honorary Enterprise Professor, School of Population and Global Health, and Department of General Practice and Primary Care, The University of Melbourne
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Professor of Public Health, University of Otago
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Professor of Public Health, University of Otago
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Professor in Marketing, Charles Darwin University
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Senior Research Fellow, University of Otago
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Director, Centre for the Study of Higher Education, The University of Melbourne
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Assistant Professor, University of Vermont
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Senior Lecturer, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia
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Senior Associate, Grattan Institute
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Lecturer, Asia Pacific College of Business and Law, Charles Darwin University
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Dean of Research, UniSA Business, Adelaide University
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Lecturer in Business and Accounting, Charles Darwin University
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Professor of Higher Education Policy, Monash University