While education providers are keen to welcome foreign students back into New Zealand, some students say delays and uncertainties have made them “exhausted and hesitant to come”.
Kyoka Horiguchi, a Japanese student at University of Canterbury (UC), said despite this month’s announcement of the border reopening she “had no plan” to return in the near future.
Under this plan up to 5000 international students will be able to skip managed isolation from April 12.
“I don’t think I will come back to New Zealand. It is really time consuming to wait for the border opening and apply for a visa. There would be too many uncertainties,” Horiguchi said.
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“I’d rather spend the time transferring to a Japanese university, completing my degree and getting a job.”
Horiguchi, who is now living with her parents in Nara, a southern city in Japan, studied linguistics and German at UC from 2017, and went home for the summer holidays in 2020.
When coronavirus began spreading, she took a year off from her study, “to have a break and a bit more time with family”. She enrolled in 2021, but did not complete the 300-level courses which were provided online for overseas students.
“It is hard for me to keep motivated via online learning. As I am learning languages, I need face-to-face communication,” she said.
“The situation is so disruptive for us international students – isolation, cancelled flights, and worries of being infected by Covid… I am really tired of Covid and prefer to stay in Japan in the near future.”
She said she might come back to New Zealand for her master’s study “in the coming five years”.
For some Chinese students, studying in New Zealand is their only option, and the long wait due to border control has kept their lives in limbo.
Liu Chenqi got his offer from a New Zealand university at the end of 2019, but he has never stepped foot in New Zealand.
“Studying in New Zealand is my plan A, and I don’t have a plan B,” said Liu, who has waited “anxiously and hopelessly” in Hohhot, China, for over two years.
He planned to study a master’s degree in fire engineering at Canterbury university, and has been offered the place with a $4000 scholarship.
But online learning is not an option for his course. Liu said UC was the only university he applied to, because of the high world ranking of its engineering study.
“UC is my dream university. I was thrilled to bits after getting the offer and the scholarship. Then the border was shut. I had no other option other than to wait. The past two years is just miserable for me and my family,” he said.
He wanted to come to New Zealand in July and start his study.
The situation is worse for graduates and students at secondary schools in New Zealand before Covid hit.
They are not eligible to take the gaokao, China’s gruelling college entrance exam. Without taking the exam, they cannot apply to Chinese universities as a backup.
For most education agents in Asian countries, the announcement of the border reopening is “too late and too little”.
Janet Wong, an education agent for JJL Overseas Education New Zealand, based in Auckland, said the industry has been in jeopardy without a clear plan from the New Zealand government for the return of international students.
“Most of our students and their parents have lost their patience. They are heading to other countries, such as the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia.
“If we are not going to open to international students this year, I guess no education agency would survive.”
The numbers of both students and staff in the sector kept dropping after Covid-19 hit, she said.
“A lack of students means less staffing. Half of our staff have been laid off,” Wong said.
No clear timeline for reopening borders to foreign students made her work and communication with students and parents “very tricky”.
“Who would be the lucky one out of the 5000 to return? How about the rest? We badly need some clarity,” she said.
Maria Cao, who completed her education bachelors’ degree in New Zealand, chose to continue her study in the United Kingdom.
She is studying Tesol at University College London. There are 90 students in her class, and 86 are from China.
”I really miss New Zealand,” Cao said.
“The whole education environment (in NZ) is much more supportive. Here, we have only one class on campus every week, the rest are provided online. I have little interaction with my lecturers or classmates.”
Asian countries have been the main market for New Zealand’s international eduction sector.
In 2019, 65,165 international students from the top three main source markets – China, India and Japan – studied in New Zealand, according to Education New Zealand.
Ben Burrowes, regional director of Asia at Educational New Zealand, said the sector had been hit “quite significantly”.
“The number of international students have diminished a lot, obviously with students returning home, and new students not able to come,”
New Zealand has “lost some ground” to competitor countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, but “it’s quite optimistic that we will build back that ground”.
“Across the region, the demand and the interest in New Zealand is still definitely there. The border announcement brings more clarity on when they could come back. It is a good sign,” he said.
One hope was students who planned to come to New Zealand for secondary school and then stay for university.
“For those students and their parents, the decision making process is often quite long. They have planned ahead, and researched on where they are going to send their kids to high school,” Burrowes said.
“Unlike high school leavers who want to enrol in a university right after graduating, those students have more flexibility, and are waiting patiently for our border to open.”
Shelley Robertson, manager of international education policy at the Ministry of Education, said visa processing will be open from April 12 for the 5000 international students, who will begin arriving from July.
However, many international students spoken to by Stuff say they would be unlikely to arrive until term one of next year.
It is not yet known where the first cohort will study or if they will be existing students who were locked out of the country when Covid-19 measures were put in place in March 2020.
Before Covid, the international education sector had huge benefits to the economy, bringing in $5 billion revenue and supporting around 45,000 jobs.
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