Opinion | Coronavirus leaves Australia’s international students in dire straits, study shows
- Students have reported a loss of income. Many have lost jobs and been unable to find new ones
- Just over one-third of respondents to a study worried they might have to leave Australia before completing their studies
Many international students in private rental housing in Sydney and Melbourne were struggling before Covid-19 hit. Our surveys of these students before and during the pandemic show it has made their already precarious situations much worse.
Of those with paid work when the pandemic began, six in 10 lost their jobs. Many were struggling to pay rent and tuition fees.
Our new report is based on two surveys of several thousand students. To track financial distress, we developed eight indicators from Australian Bureau of Statistics measures for the first survey in late 2019. We used these again for the second survey in mid-2020.
Since the lockdown, students’ responses showed:
• 29 per cent of respondents had gone without meals (up from 22 per cent prior to lockdown).
• 26 per cent had pawned or sold something to obtain money (up from 12 per cent).
• 23 per cent had experienced trouble paying for electricity on time (up from 11 per cent).
