Risks to public diplomacy from reduced student mobility
A strategic, long-term public diplomacy strategy for international higher education in Australia would include leadership and focus on ‘domestic diplomacy’. That is, ensuring that the Australian public – both in and outside of educational institutions – are aware of the wider international relations role of education and the contribution of international students outside of university coffers.
Hundreds of university staff vote to take unprotected strike
Hundreds of university staff have voted to take unprotected industrial action in protest against widespread job cuts and a lack of federal government funding support at a time when the sector grapples with the loss of international student revenue because of COVID-19.
Australian universities 'blindsided' by government seeking powers to cancel global agreements
Australian universities were “blindsided” by the Morrison government’s new powers to cancel their global agreements despite what the sector saw as a year of productive talks to resolve any security concerns through the foreign interference taskforce.
UNI TIES GET THIRD DEGREE
Education Australia's collaborative academic links with Beijing are unravelling in the political freeze between the two countries, writes Michael Smith. Academics working for Chinese government think tanks and top universities say they are cutting off communications with their Australian counterparts and cancelling plans to travel to the country because they fear they will be accused of being Communist Party infiltrators. Five prominent academics in China specialising in foreign relations and Australian studies told The Australian Financial Review it was becoming almost impossible to collaborate with Australian universities because of the rise in anti-China rhetoric.
'You just feel disconnected': how Covid has upturned uni students' lives
Learning under lockdown, staff cuts and pracs on Zoom – all part of the new normal on Australia’s virtual campuses
Students face 20 years of debt under university fee changes, modelling finds
New analysis suggests humanities and communications students will take twice as long as they do now to pay off their HELP debts.
Sydney University boss takes 20 per cent pay cut as job cuts announced
Vice-chancellor Michael Spence flagged job cuts, but stopped short of saying how many will be lost as the hit to international student revenue continues.
4 out of 5 international students are still in Australia – how we treat them will have consequences
COVID-19 has not stopped international education. As of August 24, 524,000 international students were living among us in Australian cities and communities. They represent 78% of all student visa holders, according to data the Department of Home Affairs provided to us. These students are potential ambassadors for Australia and our institutions. They could help shape our country’s reputation as a safe and welcoming destination in the post-pandemic world – but only if we look after them.
University funding overhaul forced to Senate inquiry
Universities will push for critical revisions of the funding shake-up after Labor, the Greens and crossbenchers forced it to a Senate inquiry.
Coronavirus Australia: Universities’ critical crossroads
The COVID-19 pandemic and the desperate need for treatments and a safe, effective vaccine underline the value to the nation and the world of top-level scientific and medical research. This is something at which Australia’s leading universities excel. But the pandemic also is taking our university system towards uncharted waters, as Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Greg Craven writes in Inquirer. The once-strong Australian system, he says, is entering unparalleled times of chronic vulnerability and uncertainty. And whatever it looks like in five years, “it will be radically different from today”.
Covid-19 ends Australia’s 28-year run without a recession
Australia has entered its first recession in almost three decades after Covid-19 battered the economy, which shrank a record 7 per cent in the June quarter.
Break in supply chain feeds uni Hunger Games
Successive governments also must bear some of the blame. While the hunger of some universities for overseas dollars probably was insatiable, it certainly was convenient to government that any shortfalls in research funding would be covered by foreign student earnings. And what prime minister does not like to see Australian universities at the top of world rankings?
But the current fiasco fundamentally is underpinned by the -financial psychology of universities themselves. They monetarised themselves, progressively defending their place not as being indispensable to civil society but as Australia's "second (or third) largest export industry". The problem being, if it is only about money, what happens when the money stops? As it has. Particularly when there is no sign of mass international enrolments restarting any time soon. The icy grip of COVID-19 chills the courage of policymakers as much as it freezes our borders. The precise future here is unguessable.
OECD warns months of lost learning will cause decades of economic loss
Students in different nations missed out on anywhere between seven and 23 weeks of face-to-face learning in the first wave of the pandemic, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has found. The disruption to education will not be overcome when they return to normal classes, even if the loss of face-to-face learning is limited to this year's cohort, it said.
Instead, it would lead to a long-lasting drop in productivity that would have a significant impact on the economy. The report also warned that Australia would be one of the countries worst affected by the collapse of the international tertiary student market. “Because learning loss will lead to skill loss, and the skills people have relate to their productivity, gross domestic product could be 1.5 per cent lower on average for the remainder of the century,” the OECD said in a report published on Tuesday, The Impact of COVID-19 on Education.
[See https://www.oecd.org/education/the-impact-of-covid-19-on-education-insights-education-at-a-glance-2020.pdf.]
With social distancing and online classes, does student accommodation property still provide healthy returns for investors?
The industry has seen a huge drop in occupancy following the travel bans and restrictions, Australian developer BEKL says. Appetite remains strong with first-half investments in Australia‘s student housing segment tripling the whole of 2019.
Coronavirus Government Global Briefing: September 7
Victoria roadmap to reopening is also a roadmap to elimination
Roadmaps released yesterday by the Victorian government to reopen both metro Melbourne and regional Victoria have for the first time included "trigger points" for public health reviews that include specific caseload and case source requirements, which - along with extended, strict lockdown period in Melbourne - strongly suggests an elimination strategy.
Victoria's medicine: is Daniel Andrews asking the state to swallow too big a pill?
Experts are divided on whether Victoria's 'aggressive suppression' strategy is the best way forward. Something close to normal life won’t return in Victoria until at least October 26, with curfews lifted, home visitors allowed, and restaurants and cafes open — though this is contingent on case numbers dropping to less than five a day on average. New infections continue to fall: this morning, Victoria recorded a 10-week low of 41 new cases. But experts are divided over whether such harsh restrictions are the right way forward, whether elimination is feasible, and if lockdowns are the way to do it.
Lockdowns Essential to Prevent Third Wave: JCU Researcher
New analysis shows an extended lockdown in Victoria is necessary to avoid a third wave of COVID-19 infections, and NSW should consider lockdowns and compulsory masks.
GP, mathematician and James Cook University adjunct senior lecturer Dr David Kault has calculated how lifting restrictions at different stages would affect infection rates in Victoria, and the results show an extended lockdown is needed to end community transmission.
Victoria's roadmap out of Covid lockdown is 'a sledgehammer approach', expert says
Prof Catherine Bennett says it’s important for the public to understand how modelling data is being used to determine the lifting of restrictions.
'We will not be viable': WA university leaders call for state borders to reopen
West Australian university leaders are calling for the borders to be reopened to ensure the state doesn’t lose its hard-fought market share in the global international student sector. With the majority of WA’s five universities relying on international students to remain viable, Edith Cowan University vice chancellor Professor Steve Chapman said the state’s hard border needed to be lifted by the second semester of 2021.
UNSW, ANU to each shed more than 200 jobs as revenues plummet
The universities announced the job cuts in response to the severe financial toll the COVID-19 pandemic had levelled on their budgets.
'Callous treatment': international students stranded in Australia struggle to survive
…Now a comprehensive survey of 6,000 international students and other visa holders lays bare the brutal consequences of that decision…“Beyond the statistics, the survey revealed a deep sense of social exclusion among temporary migrants that is going to have a significant impact on Australia’s global reputation,” says the co-lead researcher, Associate Prof Laurie Berg, of the Migrant Worker Justice Initiative.
Almost 500 more university jobs to go at ANU and UNSW as Covid cuts bite
Announcements bring the number of jobs lost at Australian universities this year to more than 11,000, not including casuals or contract staff
The Cashcow Helping to Fund Australia’s Vaccine Hunt Is Endangered
With the government scaling back investment in research, universities have come to rely on a flow of international students that have now been frozen out of the country to stem the virus’s spread. “Universities get accused of going down that path and looking for additional revenue,” said Young of the high numbers of international students across the nation’s university campuses. “Well, we’ve had to go down that path because our revenue from government funding sources has diminished.”
Foreign students make up over a quarter of enrollments Down Under -- more than four times the OECD average. That has made education Australia’s fourth largest export, behind only iron ore, coal and natural gas. Yet only a handful of students managed to make it into the country to begin or resume their studies amid the pandemic. There were nearly 40 international visa arrivals in July, a decline of 143,810 compared with the same month in 2019.
Australia’s education sector generated fee exports of A$13.7 billion ($10 billion) in 2018-19, trade data shows. Yet “student fees are less than half the story,” says James McIntyre, Bloomberg Economist in Sydney. “For every $1 of fees paid international students injected a further $1.35 of demand for good and services from across the economy. This equates to a further A$18.5 billion of spending, equivalent to 0.9% of GDP.”
And there’s an even bigger multiplier when it comes to the research all those foreign students’ fees helps fund. London Economics, a consultancy, estimates every A$1 spent on research at Australia’s Group of Eight Universities generates almost A$10 back in benefits to the private sector and the broader economy. The fallout from the blow to universities is already reverberating across the industry and economy, with several hundred jobs lost. Around 30,000 positions may be at risk, …
University funding changes: Centre Alliance signals it may back Coalition bill
Centre Alliance has offered the government a pathway to pass its higher education funding changes, indicating it could shift its position in return for more support for South Australian universities…Although universities were strident in criticism before the job-ready graduate package was referred to a Senate inquiry, Universities Australia has now called for “funding certainty” and submitted that it will not oppose the bill if further minor amendments are made.
Australia in race against UK, Canada, China to keep university students
Universities overseas are chartering flights for thousands of Chinese international students to return to their studies, leaving Australia racing to keep up with its top competitors, Britain, the US and Canada, in its third biggest export industry.
International student arrivals are down to dozens per month and it is not just universities suffering
A government program to bring international university students back to Australia is yet to get off the ground, as businesses reliant on overseas students warn the market will take years to recover, even in the unlikely event borders reopened for next year's semester one intake.
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In late August, a new pilot was announced in partnership with South Australia, with plans for up to 300 students to return to the state this month. So far, none have arrived and Education Minister Dan Tehan was unable to give any assurances about when the program will start.
Deadline looms for universities, foreign students
Professor Gardner says the trend at Monash since the onset of the pandemic is clear. Despite concerted efforts to bring foreign students back into the country, enrolments for semester one were significantly down. Enrolments for semester two were down further still, with some students choosing to return home and not come back. The forecast for 2021 enrolments is bleak.
Professor Gardner, the acting chair of the Group of Eight universities and a former vice-chancellor of RMIT, spoke to The Age as part of a series of stories in which prominent Melburnians offer constructive ideas about Victoria’s way forward. She describes the international student market as having a long pipeline. In normal circumstances, many students intending to enrol in a university course next year would already be in Australia studying English, a year 12 equivalence course or another tertiary course. They aren’t doing that this year. "We really are talking substantial falls," she says.
The balancing act of pandenomics
In a pandemic economy, suppressing the virus is, clearly, protecting the economy. The issue is not how fast we can weaken protections against the virus to restart the economy, but how to use the strength of the constrained economy to support those whose livelihoods are disproportionately affected by the public health measures that protect the health and economic security of us all. That's pandenomics.