ECONOMICS
MEMBER EXPERT
The fallout from the boom in
international education
The poor state of our relations with China means that the numbers that do come from there will not be as great as they once were.
What if they built it and no one came? That thought must be running through the minds of some university vicechancellors and real estate developers about sinking resources and fortunes into building swanky student housing near the campus.
Just about every Australian tertiary provider had a presence in the Melbourne CBD, either in the form of a shopfront or an actual campus. Little wonder Victorian car licence plates proclaim it ‘The Education State’. The city precincts used to be crawling with students, especially near the university city campuses. Not now.
Some struggling universities have already offloaded city properties that were meant for teaching or accommodating their students. So far there is no sign of international students coming back until 2022. That too is looking conditional upon how the vaccine roll-out proceeds.
Yet there is still a wave of construction activity erecting more purpose-built student housing premised on the fact that the boom in international education will return. The same could be said of Australia’s other capital cities. Some of the latest accommodation being erected boasts hotel style catering to rather well-off students.
The poor state of our relations with China means that the numbers that do come from there will not be as great as they once were. It seems there will be plenty of empty student accommodation when things get back to normal.
Alex Millmow Federation University Australia
12
No Australian city is more geared to the international students than Melbourne. Up until 2020, Melbourne was the ‘Boston of the Yarra’ which is how former Prime Minister Julia Gillard imagined us a few years ago.
Sentry
•
APRIL 2021
Universities were pointedly excluded from the Federal Government’s JobKeeper program on the premise that they lined their pockets from the boom in international education. Even the new Education Minister, Alan Tudge did not credit reports that the sector had already shed nearly 20,000 jobs. Yet the closing of the Australian border has left all Australian universities under some financial stress.
