Global Resilience Plan

You are invited to an informative and interactive lunchbox session on Thursday 21 October from 12–12.45pm to learn more about ACU's Global Resilience Plan and its role in spearheading the university's international strategic focus.

Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the state of international higher education in unprecedented ways. While Australia has been praised across the world for its response to the pandemic from a health perspective, mobility challenges due to continuing border closures and localised lockdowns have posed significant risks to the country’s international higher education sector.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the sector has seen:

• a reduction in demand for Australia as an education destination and in student visa applications
• increased domestic competition to retain international market share
• limited demand for online/remote learning, with 85 per cent of ACU’s offshore international students deferring their commencement in 2021 until Australian borders re-open.

ACU has not been immune to the impact of these risks.

While the full impact of the pandemic on the sector remains unknown, we do know that challenges will continue to emerge as international markets, global partners, and government policy and frameworks adapt to the ‘new normal’. A university-wide proactive approach is imperative to addressing these challenges.

ACU’s response: Global Resilience Plan (2021–2026)

ACU’s Global Strategy (2020–2023) was developed at the onset of the pandemic to enable the university to swiftly pivot its international strategic focus and to leverage its internal capabilities, institutional agility and global partnerships to adapt to the evolving environment.

The Global Resilience Plan (2021–2026) has been developed to operationalise this focus, building on ACU’s successes and strengths to ensure the university is best placed to respond to new and evolving challenges and opportunities, particularly as Australia prepares for the next phase of the pandemic.

In the short term, this plan focuses on tactics to rebuild international enrolment, revenue and global learning opportunities. In the long term, ACU’s internationalisation through diversified and sustainable models of global engagement are key.

The plan has three key priority areas: