by DIRK MULDER

Accessing on-shore study just became a lot easier

Australia opens its borders to fully vaccinated tourists and all visa holders today. While more than 70 thousand students have returned since mid-December it is today that all visa categories return to pre-covid settings, meaning students can transit via destinations previously banned.

Travellers are still required to meet the government eligibility on being vaccinated. However, today’s relaxation simplifies operations for airlines and importantly for students, safe travel zones are no longer a limitation in accessing Australia.

Accessing flights via transit points will increase capacity

This is good for students from India. Prior to today, Ravi Lochan Singh, (president of the Association of Australian Education Representatives in India) explains,  they relied on Qantas and Air India for direct flights  but while Qantas introduced direct flights between India and Sydney and Melbourne  “it acquired a reputation … for cancelling flights several times.”

“India is a large country with several exit points for students and they tend to rely on flights through Singapore, Bangkok and Malaysia,” Mr Lochan Singh says.  Before today, these transit points were impacted and while Indian students could travel to these locations, they could not then fly to Australia.

With transit through destinations such as these now possible as of today, CMM is monitoring carefully how quickly airlines will respond to these openings and how quickly full flights will start returning to our shores.

In any case, today marks a day that is so important for a sector which continues its path back to an in-country, on campus, face to face educational experience for so many.

Dirk Mulder advises education and business clients on trends in international education. He writes regularly for CMM