By John Gerritsen of RNZ News

The $5 billion foreign student industry is facing a massive downturn with as many as half of this year’s enrolments now in doubt.

Immigration New Zealand figures show that of 76,203 valid study visas at 15 March, 60,348 were in New Zealand, and 15,855 were not.

Immigration New Zealand said the figures included an unknown number of students who completed their studies last year and had visas that would expire on March 31.

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However, the numbers showed New Zealand institutions were well short of the roughly 120,000 enrolments they could expect during the course of a normal year.

Education leaders said they doubted those enrolments would happen, especially in the school sector.

Universities New Zealand director Chris Whelan said universities usually enrolled about 4000 to 4500 students in the middle of the year and they were hoping those students would still come.

“It’s impossible to say at this stage,” he said.

No early write off
“We know that it’s going to be unlikely that international travel restrictions are going to be released any time soon, but we don’t want to write it off this early.”

He said universities were still hoping that the 6500 Chinese students who were due to enrol at the start of the year but were still in China might be able to travel to New Zealand in time for the second half of the year.

“We haven’t given up on them. We are in continual contact with them and these students are still hopeful of coming here in most cases. We’ve actually lost surprisingly few of those students,” he said.

Auckland Secondary Principals Association president Richard Dykes said many schools enrolled foreign students in the middle of the year who then stayed for a further year or two.

He said that was looking unlikely this year.

“At this stage you’d have to be pessimistic and say that they’re probably not going to come.

“There’s going to be quite a big impact on schools.”

Repatriation flights
Some foreign students were taking repatriation flights home but most were staying and intending to return next year.

English New Zealand chairperson Wayne Dyer said its 22 member English language schools enrolled about 17,000 students a year and were currently teaching about 3264.

Most schools had courses starting every Monday, but the flow of new students had stopped.

“You’re looking at about 1400 to 1500 a month who won’t be coming this month and quite likely won’t be coming next month,” he said.

“There’ll be students waiting to come, but it’s not just the pandemic. There’s the corresponding financial crisis that is happening at the same time so it might well be that students who are in a less fortunate financial position than they were a month ago and that may affect some people’s study plans.”

Foreign students were the only source of income for language schools and without government help they would have to start laying teachers off, Dyer said.

The schools would approach the government for extra support beyond existing packages for businesses.

This article is republished by the Pacific Media Centre under a partnership agreement with RNZ.

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Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Remember the ‘knowledge economy’. It was a buzz-expression around 20 years ago. The impression was that the leading growth sectors would be in education, information, and communication. So, what has happened?
The chart converts employment numbers (fulltime equivalent jobs, where part-time jobs are counted as half a job) into indexes with a base of 1000 set at the year to March 2009 (the year of the Global Financial Crisis – GFC).
Prior to 2009, the growth sectors were ‘Information Media and Telecommunications’ and the assortment called ‘Professional, Scientific, Technical, Administrative and Support Services’. ‘Education’ and ‘Real Estate’ were slower growing sectors despite obvious boosts to the demand for these services in the 2000s’ decade.
After the GFC, the sector dominated by real estate (‘Rental, Hiring and Real Estate Services’) grew sharply, until the last 12 months when it dropped off markedly. Few surprises, except that the same thing did not also happen from 2003 to 2008.
The big employment stories this decade are the dramatic retrenchment of the 2000s’ darling ‘Information Media and Telecommunications’. And the flatlining of the education sector.
To understand what has been happening – rather than what has not been happening – we need to unpack the ‘Professional …’ hodgepodge. This assortment of services now represents 15% of all employee jobs, up from 10% in 2000.
Basically, this industry sector is ‘non-financial business services’, though there are many services to businesses in the other sectors as well. (The chart only shows 4 of 16 employment sectors.) The keywords are: ‘design’, ‘legal’, ‘accounting’, ‘marketing’, ‘management’ and ‘consulting’ services. These are sometime called ‘transaction services’, which represent ‘transaction costs’; ie the outsourced costs of other businesses doing business. We note that these services are not growing as a direct response to increased desire by consumers for these activities. Increased productivity in these sub-sectors should mean them releasing workers into other parts of the economy.
Another way of characterising these services is as ‘problem-resolving’ services. That means the increased demand for them is generated by an increased incidence of problems faced by businesses in other sectors. It also suggests that these are sub-sectors that grow as a result of their own failure; and that growth here follows from the persuasiveness of these professionals in convincing other businesses to purchase more of their professional services.
If meaningful economic growth represents the removals of obstacles (problems, barriers) that absorb too many of our resources, then this kind of employment should decline as these problems are solved, while employment in high level consumer services (which include media and liberal education) should be expanding in line with those services capacities to satisfy the higher levels of Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of needs’ (see Youtube explanation).

Why is employment in education increasing so slowly compared to employment growth generally? Why do we need 100 percent more transaction service professionals in 2018 compared to 2000, but only 15 percent more teachers? These business service professionals are very much embedded in the marketplace, yet no orthodox economic theory can explain the dramatic increase in our purchases of their services.
——
Lists of industries within the broad sectoral categories:
Professional, Scientific, Technical, Administrative and Support Services

• architectural services
• surveying and mapping services
• gardening services
• engineering design and consulting services
• computer system design and related services
• other specialised design services
• scientific research services
• scientific testing and analysis services
• veterinary services
• professional photographic services
• legal services
• accounting services
• advertising services
• market research and statistical services
• corporate head office management services
• management advice and related consulting services
• travel agency services
• employment services
• other administrative services
• building and other industrial cleaning services
• building pest control services
• packaging and labelling services

Information Media and Telecommunications

• newspaper publishing
• newspaper, periodical, book and directory publishing
• software publishing
• motion picture and video activities
• sound recording and music publishing
• radio broadcasting
• television broadcasting
• internet publishing and broadcasting
• telecommunications services
• internet service providers and web search portals
• data processing and web hosting services
• electronic information storage services
• libraries and archives
• other information services

Rental, Hiring and Real Estate Services

• real estate services
• property operators
• non-financial intangible assets (except copyrights) leasing
• video and other electronic media rental and hiring
• farm animal and bloodstock leasing
• motor vehicle and transport equipment rental and hiring
• other goods and equipment rental and hiring

Education and Training

• preschool education
• school education
• tertiary education
• adult, community and other education
• educational support services.