International education post-COVID-19

ITT – With the current COVID-19 pandemic situation, many students can’t stop worrying about the future of international education post-COVID-19, as many exams are postponed and many countries restrict the admission of international students.

At the end of March 2020, in a conference between leading higher education experts, GS Simon Marginson from The Global Center for Academic Research has made a bold prediction that makes many people “upset”, which is: It will take about 5 more years for the overseas education market to return to normal.

According to a recent press conference, Julie Bishop, President of Australian National University, predicts that her establishment will lose 40% of its revenue next academic year

However, for some experts, cases such as the Australian National University or some other universities are still considered lucky as they have other sources of revenue to help compensate for the decrease in revenue. For many untraditional universities, the situation will be much more urgent because these schools rely too much on tuition fees, especially on international students.

Some pessimistic comments were made forecasting that the international education post-COVID-19 will worsen over time because many universities, which traditionally accepted international students, will be forced to close down.

As stated in an annual survey of The Studyportals Organization (Netherlands) on April 14, out of the 850 students who plan to study abroad, 40% of whom are currently planning to change their plans because of COVID-19.  In reality, this number has actually increased by 9% compared to the corresponding figure announced at the end of March: when only 31% of respondents intend to change their decision to study abroad.

The real question should be what has universities in Vietnam prepared for the changes in international education post-COVID-19? If these numbers above are correct then what should these abandoned do as a replacement? Are these signals warning us about a grim future for international education?