As Australians woke up on July 1st, eager to check their pay packets for their newly minted tax cuts, a general sense of calm settled over the country that the beast of inflation had finally been tamed.
But only hours later, while the masses sipped on extra shots in their lattes in celebration, a shock announcement stunned the small, dedicated group of people who run Australia's 4th largest export industry: not only was the inflation demon not under control, but it had struck again... savagely increasing student visa fees by a jaw-dropping 125% overnight.
The cynics out there might wonder if it's because, in rejecting some 166,000 student visas more than normal in recent times the Government suddenly realised it would be leaving its own cupboard kinda bare. The fact that the rest of the Australian economy, which limped to "barely has a pulse" growth of 0.1% on the latest metrics, is likely to be tipped into recession and lose billions of dollars of revenue is clearly someone else's problem.
And that's oversimplifying the impact of the change to economics only. In this episode of the international education news, Rob Malicki (The Global Society) and Dirk Mulder (The Koala News) are joined by legendary long-term-thinker, Trevor Goddad (Goddard and Associates) to look at how this and other recent changes are likely to play out across other parts of international education.
Global Horizons is a production of The Global Society, Australia's Learning Abroad Support Company.
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