Finally, after much pain international students will now start to arrive. This is what we need right? Wrong – it could be a whole lot better

by DIRK MULDER

Of course, there are benefits for institutions in opening-up and it sends important messages to both the education community and international students who want to study here.

But charter-flights expose structural issues that need to be solved and using the existing quarantine system isn’t going to solve everything. Here’s why.

 politics: Charter flight arrivals will put incoming international students (returning or starting) in a political vice when they don’t need to be. The government has played to patriotic demands “to bring Australians home.” It won’t be long until newspapers start claiming, “international students are taking the places of Australians in the quarantine system.”  Putting international students and our industry in this position is dumb. It potentially creates hostile sentiment when we should be celebrating. Remember, we are a welcoming country!

 scale: The existing quarantine arrangements, be they in city hotels or via Howard Springs in the Northern Territory, just can’t cope with the numbers the sector needs to accommodate to make a difference. Airlines and quarantine will struggle to get the 26 000 Australians trapped offshore who want to be back for Christmas.

Even with slightly expanded quotas, there is little to no ability, under existing models to cope with the demand. ABS data shows In March this year we had 48 900 HE arrivals from overseas, down from 54 200 in March 2019.

timing: The existing two weeks in quarantine don’t align well with HE commencement dates. With fixed dates (usually semester starts in March and late July/early August) it would require a well organised effort to ensure quarantining is done in the 90-day period when students can arrive prior to starting study. Expecting students to arrive 90 days prior to study adds to their living costs.

For the sector to truly rejoice we need a new quarantine regime. It must take into account scale. It must put the student first and it must align to the sector’s needs. Recent announcements are positive, but we need a whole lot more for them to be effective.

Dirk Mulder is CMM’s international education correspondent