Foreign student income down on pre-Covid earnings
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Foreign students paid $1 billion in fees last year and more than half that money went to universities.
The figures were supplied to the Education Ministry by providers, as part of their reporting for the export education levy.
They showed 74,990 international students in New Zealand last year, including 18,020 at schools and more than 25,880 at universities.
Their fees totalled $1.085b, about $100m less than the pre-pandemic years of 2018 and 2019.
However, two sectors achieved their highest fee incomes on record - universities with $580m and government-funded private tertiary institutions with $167m.
The fee take at non-government-funded tertiary institutions, schools and polytechnics last year was well below pre-pandemic numbers.
The figure for non-government-funded tertiary institutions - a category that covered English language schools - was just $52.8m, down from a 2019 figure of $135m.
Schools received $152m, down from $201m in 2019, and polytechnics received $132.8m, down from $178m.
More than half the foreign students last year (43,060) studied in Auckland.
Most students (61,500) came from Asia, with the next most significant source being Europe with 5345.
At universities and polytechnics, management and commerce was the single largest field for foreign enrolments, accounting for 30 percent of polytechnic enrolments and 28 percent of university enrolments.
The 74,990 individual students equated to 46,005 full-time equivalents, three-quarters of the 61,530 full-time equivalents in 2019.
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