CISaustralia, which specialises in study, work experience and volunteering abroad, released its sixth study abroad industry survey in October.
Of the 37 institutions that responded to the survey, nine said they planned to send more than 1,000 students abroad in 2024 – and three said they’d send more than 4,000.
“The study abroad sector in Australia continues to successfully rebound post-COVID,” said Brad Dorahy, CEO of CISaustralia.
“This is despite the headwinds associated with staff redundancies, restructuring and change management processes over the past three to four years,” he noted.
He mentioned that while the statistics for institutions sending thousands of students abroad were encouraging, 67% of universities would be at 50% of their pre-pandemic levels or better.
The report also mentioned that study tours would be the most popular learning abroad programme in 2024, with 86% of respondents citing it in their surveys and 59% citing it as a “very important” part of their offering.
The survey concluded that the biggest factor limiting institutional learning abroad enrolments in 2023 was “limited interest, commitment and availability of academic staff”.
“The good news is that 62% of Australian universities plan to hire more staff in the field of study abroad in the next 12 months – a strong indicator of recovery,” Dorahy said.
The most popular destination by continent for learning abroad programmes continues to be Europe, with 97% citing it as a choice, followed by Asia with 81%.
The New Colombo Plan mobility programme provides funding for some study abroad programmes. The most popular destination for institutions using this funding was Japan, with 80% of institutions saying it was ‘very popular’.
However, the funding itself is under some scrutiny by the institutions surveyed, with 76% of them saying that the funding system had “not kept pace with inflation” – with most institutions also saying that the funding needed to increase by AUD$500-1000.
About three-quarters of the institutions’ students said that the environment was “little or not a factor” in their choice of destination.
The return to non-virtual programmes and fairs is also evident. In terms of fairs, 78% said they planned to run on-campus study abroad fairs in the first half of 2024, compared to 2023 data, and 92% said they wouldn’t run virtual fairs in 2024.
Some 79% of universities responding to the survey said they’d seen a drop of more than 10% in interest in virtual programmes – perhaps an indication that the pandemic era is behind us.
Despite this, 54% of respondents said they would continue to offer virtual mobility programmes in the coming year.
More encouragingly, only 3% of respondents said they wouldn’t be promoting learning abroad programmes at all in the coming year – half the number who said the same in 2022.
