New Zealand will not allow International Students until 2021

While the government of New Zealand has ruled out a travel relaxation for the year 2020 for International travelers, the universities in New Zealand are pinning their hopes on early 2021 for the COVID-19 pandemic to die down and International students enrollment.

Education Minister Chris Hipkins cautioned teachers and anticipated that the reopening of the borders is impossible as the pandemic threat lingers and “rages” internationally. “We’d be expecting providers to plan for no additional international students for the rest of this year, to bring in smaller cohorts than they may have previously expected next year,” Inside Higher Ed reports.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern advised universities to restraint from keeping any hopes about how many students could be enrolled, emphasizing that the travel would continue to be strictly managed.

She informed that before the pandemic, some 117,000 overseas students got admission in the country each year. “Since we started our quarantine system, we’ve had a total of 31,000 returning New Zealanders come through,” “That gives you a sense of the scale.” reports Inside Higher Ed.

Teachers are unsatisfied with their helplessness to enroll overseas students, notwithstanding their country’s well-regarded controlling of the COVID-19 emergency. The government boosted the country’s status with foreign students by forming a ‘hardship fund’ for them and allowing them eligibility for national wage subsidy programs while subduing the pandemic more effectively than any other education destination.

Ardern recognized that the “strong” health reaction had made New Zealand “one of the few countries where students can come and be safe from COVID.” But academics would have to wait to state this “significant strategic advantage,” she said in a report by Inside Higher Ed.

Universities New Zealand chief executive Chris Whelan said that the government is aware of the people’s fears about travelers reinstating the coronavirus. Universities acknowledged that the borders would be reopening “much later than we’d like and at much lower volumes than we’d like,” he said.

“But we also want an assurance that we can plan for a more optimistic scenario -- opening not necessarily earlier, but once we can pretty much assure the public there is no chance that a student is going to get out into the community with COVID”, he added in the report by Inside Higher Ed.