The international education sector of Australia is recovering after two years long border closures despite its renowned and top institutions and confined demand in many of its key markets. Foreign initiatives and ingenious strategies will succeed over time, but for now, inland enrolments and commencements are taking longer to rise, due to the significant decline in the Chinese market.

The main cause of the disruption of the pipeline is the loss of so many student commencements across several sectors in 2020 and 2021 which also motivates international students into Australian higher education through various pathways.

Notably, commencements in the ELICOS (English-language) sector, which is the first platform for most of the international students coming to Australia to pursue higher education, were down by 58% in Dec 2021 as compared to the 2020's timeframe which was 61%. Before the pandemic hit in February 2019, over 150,000 international students came to Australia and in Feb 2022, it was only around 50,000.

Slow Returning of Chinese students:

Chinese students are yet to return in robust numbers. Earlier, Brett Blacker, CEO, English Australia, warned that ELICOS providers and universities are not looking at a 'vast increase coming into the first few months of 2022' from China. In 2021, Chinese commencements in Australian education dropped by 48%.

Chinese students signify the largest proportion of foreign students in the country and several Australian educators, excluding the top 8 major universities, are thus bearing the severe effects of enrolment and commencement declines from China. Reduced Chinese commencements will influence the enrolment pipeline for years and the only way to cope will be to quickly expand the international enrolment base and enroll more scholars from Asian countries such as India (No.2 market), Nepal (3), Vietnam (4), and Malaysia (5) as well as the emerging markets of Indonesia, the Philippines, and Pakistan.

Border Closure Causing More Damage:

Another concern for the educators of Australia is that many international students gave up their dreams to get to Australia for programs in 2020 and 2021, in spite of the hard work many institutions, associations, and state governments put into formulating pilot schemes to bring them back when borders were shut. Over thousands of international students were abandoned offshore and several of them studied online while waiting for the borders to reopen.

Recently, a survey was conducted by online study support service Studiosity among more than 1,000 international students enrolled at Australian universities. The survey found that only 58% are planning to return to campus in 2022 and 41% informed that they would study elsewhere.

CEO of IDP Andrew Barclay said, "Institutions in Australia were fully aware that the policy settings that have been in place for the past two years meant it would be difficult to turn the tap back on. The students are tired of waiting for the return".

Australia's education sector mostly relies on international enrolments for revenues, keeping this in mind it can not be considered good news for the country. However, Australian educators are not sitting idly and planning for recovery to gain momentum.

Australia's work in formulating new models for shifting with Asian countries could be very decisive and they will undoubtedly help in shaping a new era in international education in Australia.