With the semester one start date fast approaching, and more than 100,000 Chinese international students blocked from entering Australia, universities are bracing for a massive financial hit:
At the University of Sydney, international students from China make up 24 per cent, or about 17,000, of the 71,000-strong student population.
The university said it understood about 14,000 of those remained overseas, based on information from the Federal Government
If the university has to start reimbursing fees or cancelling enrolments, the cost could be very high…
At the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra, 5,000 students from China are enrolled, but some 80 per cent of those have been affected by the travel ban…
At Curtin University, the travel ban has stopped 62 per cent of its Chinese students — a total of about 850 — from returning to Perth…
Universities and schools acknowledged there would be a substantial financial hit if fee-paying Chinese students could not return soon.
“If they’re not able to study this year, they won’t be paying fees to the university,” Curtin University’s Professor Terry said.
Separately, the University of Queensland claims that 45% of its circa 18,000 international students have been left stranded, which will leave a “sizeable reduction in revenue” over the first half:
“We estimate about 45 per cent of our international students are currently unable to join us for the start of semester 1 on February 24,” [UQ vice-chancellor Peter Hoj] said…
Professor Hoj warned the reduced university revenue could impact the university in the longer term.
“Clearly, this will result in a sizeable reduction in revenue for the first half of the year,” he said.
“I want to assure you that in the short term, as a result of our financial discipline over the past few years, we are in a position to weather this reduction in semester 1 revenue.
“However, as it remains unclear how long the restrictions will last and what their longer-term impact will be, I have asked senior executives across the university to work with their teams to take a prudent approach to operating expenditure for the foreseeable future.”
He called on staff to “chip in and consider doing things differently”…
Queensland University of Technology has 9000 international students – not all from China – among its 50,000 students.
Professor Salvatore Babones yesterday warned that Australia’s university sector is most at risk from the coronavirus, and estimated that the Australian economy stands to lose some $2.8 billion to $3.8 billion in lost education ‘exports’ if the virus lasts until mid-year:
The number of students enrolled from China (including Hong Kong and Macau) in Australian educational institutions has risen by a factor of four since 2002, doubling once between 2002 and 2008 and doubling again between 2008 and 2019.25 In higher education (which includes the university sector), Chinese enrolments have risen six-fold since 2002. Chinese students account for 29.2% of all international student enrolments in Australia, but 39.4% of international higher education enrolments. And within the higher education sector, they are disproportionately concentrated in high-revenue coursework master’s programs. As a result, the one Australian export sector most at risk of a systemic economic crisis arising out of the coronavirus epidemic is the university sector.
It is inherently risky to build a business around education exports to the citizens of a totalitarian police state with which Australia has contentious international relations…
The rapid, sustained revenue growth of the last five years gave education services exporters ample opportunities to build reserves in preparation for a sudden downturn, even if they could not predict the precise form or timing of a possible future crisis. It now appears that they have squandered these opportunities…
Separately, Babones estimated that all elite Group of Eight (G8) universities, other than the University of Western Australia, are highly exposed to the loss of Chinese students:
Brace for calls from universities for a taxpayer bailout. But don’t expect vice chancellors to take cuts in their exorbitant million-dollar pay.
