New Zealand earned $4.98 billion from international education in the year to June 2026, lifting the sector back above where it sat before the border closed in 2020. Education Minister Erica Stanford released the figure on Friday, and it beats the $4.403 billion the country earned in the year to June 2019, the last full year before the pandemic shut the trade down.
The rebuild has been quick. Export earnings were $3.533 billion in the year to June 2024 and $4.295 billion in the year to June 2025. Reaching $4.98 billion means the sector has grown 41 per cent in two years, which makes it one of the fastest growing pieces of the export economy at a time when most of the rest of it is grinding.
“In the year to June 2019, international education generated $4.4 billion in export earnings. Today, that figure has climbed to $4.98 billion,” Stanford said in the announcement. “That is a significant milestone for a sector that was hit harder than almost any other by the COVID-19 border closures.”
Student numbers tell a different story. There were 92,580 international enrolments in 2025, up from 69,140 in 2023, and the Government expects about 99,000 this year. That is still roughly 14 per cent short of the 115,705 students who were here in 2019. The money is back. The people are not, or at least not yet.
Run the two years against each other and the gap becomes the interesting part of the story. In 2019 each enrolment was worth about $38,050 in export earnings. On this year’s projected numbers each enrolment is worth about $50,300, close to a third more. Those are nominal figures with no adjustment for inflation, and seven years of price rises account for a fair chunk of the difference. But the shift in the mix is real, because the sector is now leaning on longer, more expensive study rather than sheer volume.
Stanford put it plainly. “It is encouraging that we are generating more value of international education with fewer students,” she said.
The growth is not spread evenly. University enrolments rose 14 per cent compared with the same period last year, while school enrolments rose 9 per cent, including a 22 per cent increase in primary school enrolments. Primary is growing off a small base, so the percentage flatters it, but it is a category that barely existed as an export line two decades ago and it is now moving faster than anything else in the numbers.
Most of that money does not stay inside the education system. The release cites Education New Zealand figures showing an international student spends on average around $45,776 a year in this country before tuition fees are counted. That is rent, groceries, power, bus fares, phone plans, weekend trips and flights home for the holidays, and it lands hardest in the handful of towns and cities that host campuses. Stanford said international education “brings billions of dollars into New Zealand, supports jobs and businesses, strengthens our universities and schools, and drives economic activity in communities right across the country”.
Behind the numbers sits a set of immigration decisions. “We have been deliberate about getting our immigration settings right so New Zealand can compete internationally for students while maintaining the integrity of our immigration system,” Stanford said. In November 2025 in-study work rights went from 20 hours a week to 25 for eligible student visa holders, and were extended to tertiary students on approved exchange and study abroad programmes. From 16 November 2026 a new short term graduate work visa gives six months of open work rights to graduates of qualifications at levels 5 to 7 who miss out on the longer post study work visa, and the post study work visa itself is being opened up to holders of New Zealand graduate diplomas.
Those changes flow from the International Education Going for Growth Plan, released in July 2025, which set out to double the sector’s economic contribution. It targets 105,000 enrolments by 2027 and 119,000 by 2034, with export earnings of $7.2 billion by that year. This year’s expected 99,000 students leaves the 2027 target 6,000 enrolments away with about a year to find them. The earnings target is the harder ask, because getting from $4.98 billion to $7.2 billion over eight years needs growth of roughly 4.7 per cent every year without a stumble.
There are reasons that could stall. Student demand swings with the currency, with visa rules in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom, and with how easy it is to find somewhere affordable to live in Auckland. A sector that lost most of its revenue in a single year in 2020 knows how quickly the line can turn. Newswire reported in July that student visa approvals had hit a decade high, which is the pipeline that should carry next year’s figure higher again.
The politics of this are not settled either. International education sits inside immigration policy, and immigration settings are among the things parties will be arguing about before the general election due later this year. Work rights for students, post study visas and the size of the intake are all levers a new government could pull in either direction. If you want to see where the parties stand before you vote, our voting tool lays out their positions side by side.
For now the sector has done something few parts of the economy have managed since 2020, which is to earn more than it did before the pandemic. Whether it can do that with the student numbers it used to have is a separate question, and one the next few years will answer.
What do you make of the push to grow international student numbers, and has it changed the town or city you live in? Leave a comment below and tell us what you are seeing.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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