China relaxes internet restrictions for students affected by Australian travel ban

China has agreed to relax its internet restrictions for students affected by Australia’s coronavirus travel ban so they can begin their courses online.

Over 100,000 Chinese students are unable to enter Australia due to the Australian government’s 14-day travel ban from all of mainland China.

These students had already had their visas approved and were due to begin their courses by the end of February.

An emergency council of universities and education providers, called Australia’s Global Reputation Taskforce, met with trade minister Simon Birmingham and education minister Dan Tehan to formulate a plan to limit a feared $8 billion hit to the economy due to travel ban disruptions.

Phil Honeywood, head of the International Education Association of Australia and chair of the emergency taskforce, announced that internet restrictions would be lifted for students so they could reach university portals and lecture recordings so they could begin their course.

Honeywood added that despite “challenges over many years… we’ve been able to make good progress on online learning options into China. There have been really worthwhile negotiations with the Chinese embassy.”

There are further fears for Australian Universities as student visa approvals have been frozen by the home affairs department, and this includes students that have a confirmed place at an Australian university.

There have been really worthwhile negotiations with the Chinese embassy

– Phil Honeywood

This disruption could mean that Chinese students opt to go to other international universities, particularly in the UK, US and Canada who are the main competitors for Chinese students.

Universities in these three countries also start their academic year in September, meaning that they are less likely to be affected by the coronavirus outbreak.

Individual Australian universities have been implementing their own systems to alleviate the problems caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

The University of New South Wales has recently changed to a trimester system that would allow for students to defer until the beginning of June, while Monash University has pushed back the start date of its semester by a week.

The Australian travel ban is part of a global effort to prevent the spread of the virus, with over 200 people testing negative for coronavirus in Scotland in the past 10 days.

The University of Warwick implemented a “university-related travel ban” to the Wuhan region last month.