Whatever the manifold benefits of a more internationalized student body, at many institutions in Canada, one reigns supreme: money.   It’s a problem everywhere in Canada, but in Ontario, British Columbia and Cape Breton in particular, international student fees make up huge portions of the institutional operating budget: rarely lower than 20% of income and in some cases reaching over 50%.  Partly through government neglect and partly through institutional avarice, institutions became hooked on international student money.

And then came a crisis in which institutions risked losing them, all at once.  It is not an exaggeration to say this is the biggest and most immediate financial challenge facing universities and colleges.  Because as things stand, no student not currently in the country is going to be in the country in September. 

For the current stay-at-home orders to be lifted, the new infection rate needs to drop to very close to zero for a couple of weeks, and a system of screening, testing, isolation and tracking needs to be in place.  That’s going to take awhile, mainly because we still aren’t adopting things like central quarantine (key to defeating the virus in China) and aggressive testing and tracking like South Korea and Taiwan.  I suspect we will never adopt central quarantine because we feel it is too icky and more aggressive tracking is hampered by the lack of testing kits and the sheer number of person-hours required to make it work (although this would make for excellent student work this summer).  Best guess right now is that we start to exit stay-at-home by June or so.   

But that doesn’t mean that everything goes back to normal.  The unwinding of the full set of policies that were imposed in the last three weeks of March is probably going to take nine to twelve months.  Universities, for instance, will probably remain shut for a long time because of the way people congregate there.  In famously non-lockdown Sweden, for instance, face-to-face instruction at universities has been suspended for three weeks now, and in China schools remain closed even as life gets back to normal elsewhere.  My view is that universities will probably not be cleared for a return to face-to-face until after Labour Day and even there may be ongoing restrictions (100+ student classes are going to be a real problem).

But maybe even more long-lasting than that are the restrictions to international travel that have been gradually instituted over the past six weeks.   It’s really hard to see when those come down, or how.  The virus is going to remain powerful in countries with poor public health capabilities (most notably in Africa) for a couple of years at least.  A gradual lifting of travel restrictions might occur between countries who are deemed to be acceptably COVID-free might be possible in the fall – think of it as a “coalition of the cured” – meaning we might have flights to China and South Korea, but not to countries where the virus is still active (an interesting question is what happens if the US is not in the first wave of countries inside the travel coalition).  Even then, we might still have mandatory 14-day quarantines for people coming into the country, which is going to depress tourism and business travel, but might not be a deal breaker for students intending to spend a couple of years here (though it would affect recruitment: my guess is it will be a lot easier to recruit from China than from Africa or India for at least the next year or so due to travel restrictions).  But, bottom line, none of this is happening before September. 

(Also: even if by some miracle universities and colleges were open and travel allowed to a few countries, it’s not clear that we have the consular staff in many countries to process all the student visa requests)

So, this leaves us with a problem: how do our institutions get by without international students?  And the answer, I think, is that you don’t give up on recruiting them.  But institutions might have to forego some of their income for a bit.

The important thing here is that the virus isn’t actually depressing demand for Canadian higher education.  Students still want to come and will return once this is over (though the economic crisis associated with the virus might be a problem for students in some countries, as it will reduce ability-to-pay).  Foregoing a September enrolment probably isn’t necessary; but providing international students with a credible 2020-21 offering – one that is miles removed from what we normally do – is incredibly important.

It starts with a credible online education offering in the fall.  And I don’t just mean creating online-specific courses instead of the DIY-remote teaching stuff we did last month – I mean having very high-quality student services available online as well (and for international students I suggest having as many of these in their own language as possible).  It continues with guarantees to let students in as soon as they are able to travel – absolutely do not flunk anyone out for poor marks during the online period.  Then organize and pay for their quarantine once travel is possible (and use the quarantine time to do some more on-boarding) and do a lot more than usual to help them find housing once they get here.  Do some price discounting.  You’ll get the enrolments.

Now there is one sticking point with this strategy: what if universities are allowed to re-open for face-to-face in October?  That would leave universities in a very odd position: domestic students, tired of being away from their friends and stuck at home for six months, are going to want to go back immediately.  Do you tell them no because international students can’t join them?  Or do you end up running two programs in parallel – one face-to-face and one online?  This is a tough decision, and one that many institutions may wish to side-step completely.  One way, obviously, is simply to announce that the way you start the term is the way you intend to finish it, which would lock both domestic and international students into an online experience for the entire term.

But there is another way, and that is simply to treat international students as an entirely separate cohort for 2020-2021.  Continue to admit international students on an ongoing basis, but only start their programs in January.  For the first eight months, they could be treated as a separate cohort, taking a restructured curriculum with modules/classes that would allow them to be integrated into the regular set of classes with peers by September 2021.  If that takes classes right through the summer, or block class scheduling, or whatever – fine.  It’s worth the cost.

Neither strategy prevents institutions from losing money – potentially quite a lot of it – for the September term.  But there is no use crying over spilled milk.  The issue is how we prevent a fall-term crisis from becoming a full-year catastrophe, or possibly – if the Americans continue to struggle with the outbreak longer than we do – turning it into an actual opportunity for growth.  And the keys are: superior online delivery, price discounting (including possibly organizing and paying for quarantine) and flexibility in program organization and delivery.  

Institutions that can manage those three things will come out of this crisis in reasonable shape.  Those that cannot, well…. I have a feeling it won’t be pretty.