Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Neil Quigley: Waikato University Vice-Chancellor on more than 92 thousand international students were enrolled last year

Transcript

Neil Quigley: Waikato University Vice-Chancellor on more than 92 thousand international students were enrolled last year · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: International student numbers bouncing back fourteen percent up on last year,
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: brings the wider education sector to around eighty percent of
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: pre COVID levels. India China still our biggest education markets.
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Neil Quigley, University of Waikato, Vice Chancellor, with Me Live
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: this morning. Neil, good morning, Good morning, Ron. What do
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: you seeing.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Well? I think that during the pandemic we really struggled,
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: of course to get international students on shore, and so
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: you know, this is partly a return to the markets
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: that we had pre the pandemic. And given that it
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: often takes international students two years from the point of
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: contact through to enrollment in New Zealand, there's a necessary
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: reasonable delay of the pipeline.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Then it's a slow beast to wake back up, isn't it.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: What about the correct You sort of hear anecdotally that
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: international students are avoiding places like America because of Trump
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: and other issues. Are you seeing that we're benefiting from
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: that or.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Not yet benefiting from the global trend? And it's not
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: just the politics of the United States. It's also that
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: visa policies in Canada and Australia and the UK have
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: changed and in those countries. Some universities had really really
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: large percentages of international students and they've probably pushed over
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: the level where there was social license for them to
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: continue taking those numbers of international students. So big changes
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: in visa policy in those countries have certainly helped us.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: What ratio at a university is too much, do you
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: think and to the point where you lose your social license?
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Well, we're talking in Australia and in the UK and
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Canada about universities that had fifty percent plus international students
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: on shore. So that obviously has a huge impact on
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: the experience of the university because it means in those
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: subjects that are popular with international students, you might face
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: an overwhelming majority of international students in those classes. So
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: the New Zealand universities that I think of as leaders
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: in international education, which i'd include Whitcotto, we're sort of
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: in the low twenties as a percentage of total student
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: enrollment on shore at the moment. And you know, we're
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: comfortable with that, but are we certainly not looking at
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: fifty percent?
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Interesting what revenue wise or sort of income wise through university,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: how important are the international students.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Well, they're very important because we have a free hand
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: in setting the tuition fees. So we're able to set
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: the tuition fees at a level where we can just
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: recruit the number of students that we want to recruit,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: and normally at the moment varies across different disciplines, of course,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: but that's often net of commissions and recruitment expenses, maybe
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: twenty percent above the revenue we get for a domestic
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: student in the same program.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: How elastic is the demand? I mean, can you just
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: go as high as you want and they'll keep paying?
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: No? No, no, definitely not, because you know, the international students
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: are very aware of the ranking of universities. So whenever
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure talking to students who are thinking about
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: coming to study in New Zealand, they know more about
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: where every university ranks of each subject than I do.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: It's very impressive the way they study these things. And
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: so you know, our ability to charge is linked to
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: the international markets perception of our quality, and obviously at
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: the moment that's pretty good, But neither are any of
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: us Harvard or Standard.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Neil Quigley, University of Waikato Vice chant Legod TV on
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: the show this morning.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: to news talks it Be from five am weekdays, or
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: follow the podcast on iHeartRadio