Evolution of the number of international students in major host countries, 2019–2020

The most noticeable fallout of the pandemic on the development in the numbers of international students can be seen in two host countries, the US and Australia. According to data published by the US Institute of International Education (IIE), the total number of international students at US universities dropped by 15% in the 2020/21 academic year, compared to the previous year, from approximately 1.1 million to roughly 914,000. This negative Covid-19 effect becomes even more apparent among international first-year students, where a slump of 46% was recorded.

Statistics released by the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade) on the total number of international students in Australia indicate a comparatively minor decline of just 5% between 2019 and 2020. Nonetheless, among international first-year students enrolling for the first time in 2020, there is also a substantial drop of approximately 23%. The fact that this decline was not even higher in view of the extremely strict entry restrictions in Australia is probably mainly due to the fact that the entry ban only applied from 20 March 2020 and that some of the newly enrolled students in 2020 had already entered Australia beforehand.

Official student data on the United Kingdom published by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) for the 2020/21 academic year reveal a surprising finding: rather than a reduction in the total number of international students compared to the 2019/20 academic year – as in the two other major Anglophone host countries – there is an increase of around 9%. Even the numbers of international first-year students, enrolled for the first time in the United Kingdom in the 2020/21 academic year, are up by approximately 4%.

Finally, a closer look at the key non-English speaking host country Germany shows that the shift in student numbers can be placed somewhere between the decreases and increases described above. Year-on-year, the total number of international students rose by roughly 2% in the 2020/21 winter semester, while approximately 22% fewer international students enrolled for the first time in German universities in the 2020 academic year (the 2020 summer semester plus the 2020/21 winter semester), compared to the 2019 academic year.