Following yesterday’s news that numbers of international students studying in Australia had dropped by nearly 40% in the last year, it would seem their neighbours New Zealand are faring slightly better. Recently released figures show that numbers of international students rose from 88,570 to 93, 500 in the last year for the first time in six years.

Robert Stevens, chief executive of Education New Zealand attributes the rise to the tendency for people to stay in education for longer or re-enter tertiary education from the labour market during times of economic hardship.

However, the rise may also be due to some intensive marketing strategies implemented over the course of the last few years. Stevens said that his organisation and other education providers had worked hard to attract new students from China, India, Vietnam, North America, Brazil and Germany last year.

One notable campaign saw Education New Zealand run secondary school cricket competitions in New Delhi. Stevens said: “Those competitions really helped put New Zealand on the map for education options and it was through a very simple marketing campaign.” Although he added that it was too early to have any firm statistics about the success of such campaigns he also said that anecdotal evidence and feedback had been very positive.

Similar to Australia, the bulk of international students in New Zealand come form China, Japan and India with the majority choosing to study English. However there were also significant numbers studying business and tourism. New Zealand and Australia have traditionally been very popular destinations for international students because of the high standards of education and equally high standards of living in the countries but it would seem that current difficulties with Australian student visas are encouraging more students to choose New Zealand as their study destination.

Have you chosen to study in New Zealand over Australia? Let us know what influenced your decision.