NSW vice chancellors L-R: Professors Alex Zelinsky, Zlatko Skrbis, Andrew Parfitt, Ian Jacobs, Brigid Heywood, Patricia M Davidson, and Barney Glover with moderator Tim Orton from the Nous Group.

Australian Catholic University (ACU) vice chancellor Professor Zlatko Skrbis was part of the NSW Vice Chancellors panel discussion held in Sydney last week (18 November).

The panel, hosted by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, explored how the higher education sector will ensure universities remain resilient and sustainable.

According to The Age, NSW vice chancellors’ committee convener Professor Barney Glover, from Western Sydney University, said if borders remained open and international students were allowed to return, a resurgence in enrolments could be expected to start next year and in 2023.

“I think we will see a return to 2019 levels over the next two years,” Professor Glover said. 

University of NSW vice chancellor Ian Jacobs said he expected international students to flood back to Australia once allowed, but cautioned universities against putting “all our eggs in one basket”.

“I’d love to see online embraced in a massive way by Australian universities. Australia can be genuinely educating millions and millions of people around the world, who can’t access a good quality education, through using online technology.”

Prof Zlatko Skrbis said he was “slightly less optimistic” than his colleagues about “where we are going to land in a few years time” with the return of international students.

He stressed that many students wanted to return to campuses for face to face learning.

“I think we will need to think about how we calibrate the online and face to face modalities because the fundamental urge to be social and to create those communities and enjoy them is going to be there."

National Catholic education deputy director Sally Egan attended the panel and said Prof Skrbis challenged tertiary educators to emulate school educators and get back to face to face teaching and to consider the pedagogy required to maintain online learning.

"Our school communities understand the value of onsite learning for students' social, academic and emotional wellbeing, and tertiary-level students also need to be connected to their learning communities to give them the best support for post-school education." 

Some parts of this article are extracts from an article that was first published in The Age

L-R: Sally Egan, Prof Zlatko Skrbis, and Jason Flynn and Lee Hickin from Microsoft.