Casual university staff struggle to cope as coronavirus travel ban locks out international students

Casual staff at Australian universities are “panicking” as the coronavirus travel ban continues into a third week, a University of Sydney lecturer has said.

The lecturer, who spoke to Guardian Australia on condition of anonymity, said sessional teaching staff had been experiencing significant strain as a consequence of the Australian government refusing entry to people who have recently travelled through mainland China since the outbreak of coronavirus.

The travel restrictions have hit the higher education sector particularly hard, with universities heavily reliant on income from full-fee paying international students. Universities have estimated they face $1.2bn in lost fees from an estimated 65,800 international students at risk of cancelling their first semester enrolment due to being stranded outside Australia, the Australian reported.

The uncertainty around enrolments has had a direct effect on the teaching staff at the university, the lecturer said. “The casual workforce gets hired based on enrolments. Casual teaching contracts require student numbers to be confirmed. People were panicking.”

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The lecturer said they were aware of a course at the university for which one third of enrolled students were stuck in China. The government’s travel ban, initially 14 days, was extended for another week, and is due to expire again on Saturday.

“How do you manage teaching contracts when a third of your students are overseas?” the lecturer said. “The university has a huge and unhealthy dependence on the international student market. The casualisation of the workforce leaves the university incredibly vulnerable to crises like this, and they’re going to happen more and more often.”

The lecturer was concerned that a rapid shift to online teaching to accommodate students stuck overseas would put staff in a very difficult position.

“A lot of teachers here aren’t bilingual, and they aren’t being paid to work outside their time zone to help students with their studies as the semester starts.”

Many sessional staff also did not have access to private office space in which to conduct lectures or tutorials by Skype, or to have the conversations with their international students that long-distance teaching might require.

“Teachers have told me that they have resorted to emailing every student individually and that’s not sustainable. All this suggests that the institution can’t provide or effectively manage the experience that students are paying a lot of money for,” the lecturer said.

“There has been goodwill from the university, but to me that goodwill has skewed towards presentation and representation and away from the actual experience of students and staff.”

The University of Sydney said in response it was “working hard to minimise disruptions as much as possible given the ongoing uncertainty of the situation”.

“We appreciate this is a challenging time for many of our students and staff – including our highly skilled and valued casual workforce,” the statement said.

The university said it expected to be able to provide further clarity for semester one plans once the government had confirmed whether the travel ban would be lifted.

Related: Exempt Chinese students from coronavirus travel ban, New Zealand universities urge

The university has 14,000 students who have been affected by the travel ban. It said for all other students it was “business as usual”, and the semester would start as scheduled on 24 February.

The National Union of Students has called for the travel ban to be lifted immediately, saying it was a “heavy handed, inconsistent and discriminatory decision” that had “disproportionately affected” international students.

The president of the NUS, Molly Willmott, said assistance from universities for affected students had been “hit and miss”.

“The travel ban has created a situation of uncertainty, which has heightened stress and anxiety with students,” Willmott said.

“Things like their education, visa, housing and work are all affected by this travel ban and the longer it is in place the more this uncertainty grows. There are obviously already issues with international student mental health and isolation, so this situation is just exacerbating these issues.”

Universities have been implementing a variety of access strategies for students affected by the ban, including providing course materials online, extending due dates for fees and offering deferment of studies.

“Some universities are making an active effort to overcome the issues now facing international students with this ban, and putting some services online, while others have gone business as usual and have failed to make accommodations,” Willmott said.

The Chinese government agreed last week to relax its severe internet restrictions after lobbying from the higher education sector, a move that would allow international students to access course materials online.