Foreign students contributed $885 million in fees last year, with almost half of that amount going to universities. The Export Education Levy statistics revealed that foreign enrollments in 2023 doubled from a historic low in 2022, with only universities nearing their pre-pandemic levels.
Despite the challenges posed by the pandemic, universities’ fee income remained robust at $547 million, slightly lower than the sector’s pre-pandemic figure of $580 million in 2019. The total fee income for all education providers, while below the pre-pandemic total of $1.2 billion, nearly doubled the $483 million reported in 2022, indicating a positive trend.
The annual statistics indicated that universities’ reliance on China as a source country had increased, while schools had almost fully recovered their enrollments from Japan. Schools received $114 million in foreign student fees last year, nearly double the 2022 total but lower than the 2019 figure of $202 million.
They enrolled 14,125 students, which was about two-thirds of their pre-pandemic total. Secondary schools had over 3000 students from Japan last year, but their Chinese enrollments were less than half of pre-pandemic totals at 2795.
Te Pūkenga’s fee income more than doubled to $91 million last year. In 2023, 8320 foreign students enrolled, nearly half from India. English language schools enrolled 9500 foreign students, less than a third of their 2019 total.
Chris Whelan, the chief executive of Universities New Zealand, stated that universities were “very close” to returning to pre-pandemic international student enrollment levels.
One of the biggest challenges with new markets was visa and immigration settings related to students’ finances. International students’ fees directly contributed to universities’ financial viability, as without them, the cost of teaching domestic students would be about 15% higher.
