Geoff Bilbrough: Education NZ General Manager on the rising interest in New Zealand from international students

More international students are keen on studying in New Zealand. 

Data shows the number of international students has grown by 6% since last year. 

Universities are still at a pre-pandemic capacity, despite the growth in the sector this year. 

Education New Zealand General Manager Geoff Bilbrough told Ryan Bridge that countries like Canada and Australia putting caps on foreign students will benefit our sector. 

He says some of the interest in New Zealand is at the expense of Australia. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The international student numbers are up seventy three thousand enrollments
between January and August this year. That's up twenty four
percent compared to the same period last year. The numbers
are up six percent on twenty twenty three. Totals already
still not back to pre COVID levels, though we are
seven percent shy of that. Jeff bilbra Is with Education
New Zealand. This is a Crown entity set up to

(00:23):
promote us basically as a study destination to the world.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Jeff, good morning, good morning, how are you today, Thanks
leaving me on the show.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
Great to have you here. This is obviously a big
export earner for us. Why, yes, the numbers are good,
but why aren't we back to you or doing what
the Aussies are doing and beating their pre COVID levels.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Oh well, the first thing to note is that in
just two terms that we've had more enrollments than we
had in all of last year. So that's a good
thing to celebrate. Regarding the Australians, what happened and to
the Canadians to some extent, what happened during the pandemic
is both countries decided to use international students as are
economic consentive to help their economy local economies, and they

(01:03):
both developed what were quite welcoming policies for international students.
Sadly that had not good effects in both countries. And
what we're now seen is both Canada and Australia are
bringing in cats to international students. In Canada, the student
experience was particularly poor and there were reports of students
having to use food beats and some sleeping rough and

(01:26):
in Australia they lost public support for international education. Now
we haven't had either of those experiences the New Zealand.
Our research suggests that over eighty percent of international students
rate their experience very highly and by far the bulk
majority of New Zealand is more than seventy percent. Still
have very positive experiences and positive perceptions of New Zealand.

(01:47):
So both Australia and Canada had very welcoming policies. They
got lots of students and it's caused them problems shutting down.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
But they did get the cash too, didn't they. You know,
that's the outside to it. I suppose cats that you're
talking about that Australia is going to put in will
they benefit us?

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Absolutely? So what's happened now is that the Australian and
the Canadian policies look a lot more like us. So
if you think of it as a running race, they
might have had a bit of a head start before,
but now they're back at the starting line alongside us,
and so we're starting to see a lot of interest.
The agent networks that we have offshore teams work with
them daily. They're telling us that there's a lot of

(02:27):
interest in New Zealand. We'll do a brand health monitor
and we've just got some initial results. I can't give
you the numbers, but I can tell you that it's
positive and it looks like some of the awareness that
we're getting and some of the interests is at the
expense of the Australian. So definitely it's a good period
for New Zealand. But I think we need to recognize
that the sort of the steady growth that we've had

(02:48):
over the past three years since the border has reopened
has been to the benefit of both the sector and
the student and the sect that has been able to
build their capacity back steadily and the students experience has
continued to be good through that period.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Without a sort of rip shit and bustling like Australia
and Canada have done. Jeff, My words, not yours, Jeff, Jeff,
thank you very much for being on the very Ryan
Jeff Pilb, who is with education in New Zealand. For
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