Australian Universities Coordinate Outbreak Response for Students Trapped in China

(AFR) — Australia’s higher education Global Reputation Task Force says the government has agreed that Chinese passport holders who are overseas but can prove they have been in a third country for at least a month will be admitted to Australia.

The concession was a result of the first meeting of the Task Force on Monday. It also established a hotline for students and for education providers, with an email address alternative.

Chair of the group, Phil Honeywood, said the main issue for students still in Wuhan was that Australian staff from Austrade in Shanghai and Beijing, and noncore Australian staff at the embassy in Beijing, had been evacuated from the city. This meant that people quarantined in Wuhan had have fewer resources to make contact with education and migration providers.

The Task Force meeting included officials from every state and territory. They agreed to put together care packages for students who are in self quarantine. And universities said they would set up student-buddy arrangements to help Chinese nationals who cannot take up classes.

“It’s a bit like bushfires. We are thinking of students who are self isolated to make sure their welfare is being looked after but they remain self quarantined,” Honeywood said.

Organizations and governments at the meeting agreed to protocols to make sure  communications related to the disease are as aligned as much as possible to each other and are reflected in full on the federal governments’ Study in Australia website.

Saxon Rice, chief executive of the Australian Skills Quality Authority, which regulates the vocational education sector, said vocational education deferrals can be covered on compassionate grounds under the national code.

The Home Affairs Department agreed to establish a database of exactly who is in China. This was in response to complaints for higher education providers at all levels who said they don’t have a good idea about who is in the country and what advice they needed.

Monash is the only university so far to say it will put the starting time of the first semester back, setting a new commencement date of March 9. The university said all week one classes would be provided online and physical classes would not start until March 16.

It said all new students must register their attendance on campus by the middle of March and classes will be live-streamed until then

Brian Schmidt, vice-chancellor of the Australian National University, said the university would be “generous and flexible“ to students who had been caught up in the crisis.

Other members of the Group of Eight said they would offer classes electronically;  the University of New South Wales directed students to a “special circumstances“  webpage for people who are prevented from studying for reasons outside their control.

The Group of Eight universities, which represents 63% of all Chinese students, has set up a web page coordinating announcements from the major higher education providers.

This story was first published in The Australian Financial Review.