International student enrolments for 2021 are 10 per cent down on last year and 22 per cent down on where the university had projected them to be before the pandemic.
This equates to a loss of about 5300 full-time,full-fee paying international students,from a peak of 23,500 in 2019 to 18,200 this year.
Loading
Sixty per cent of those students enrolled this year are studying from another country.
University vice-chancellor Duncan Maskell said there was no realistic prospect of welcoming overseas students back on campus this year,despite recent promising progress with vaccines.
“The way that the political rhetoric is at the moment suggests to me that there is no real appetite for opening borders to international students in that period,” he said. “Our risk calculation is based on those borders not being open next semester.”
However,Professor Maskell said the university had weathered the downturn well enough that it might not need to slash the 450 full-time positions it estimated it would cut last year.