Inside The University of Melbourne

I was thinking the other day with the after effects of COVID-19 impacting the wider economy in Australia, how would the higher education sector react to the lingering impacts? How about the general vibe in Universities? Will that shift?

• More English being heard at The University of Melbourne / Upper Swanston Street area

Well you might have been getting pretty fluent in understanding Chinese, Hindi or Cantonese over the past few years. But now, you’ll have to make your efforts in your own time rather than passing by students on a day to day basis

• Student accommodation demands dropping

Oh these are always pretty full at the start of every semester, including all the apartments and shared rentals near Universities throughout the academic year. This year though, rents are staying stagnant or dropping or housing simply isn’t filling up. Pretty standard knock-on effect.

• Businesses around student areas being impacted

Weather its Clayton, Burwood East, Hawthorn, Footscray, Carlton or Bundoora – these are all areas that have large university populations and so I would say those food joints and student hang out spots will be suffering this yer.

• Drop off in migration

Yeah so nobody local really can say that they love migration. Every year the city gets more crowded, infrastructure struggles to keep up with increasing demands and the cost of living continues to outpace wage growth. But it keeps the economy “growing”, with the government forecasts always including hundreds of thousands in net migration every year to facilitate the growth in the economy, there will definitely be a couple of dull years coming up

This year’s budget had assumed a net 270,000 increase in migration for 2019-20 and just a small drop off the following year. An 85 per cent drop would take net migration down to 40,500, the lowest rate in decades.

It’s not all doom and gloom for some, house price growth will slump so the people that managed to keep their jobs and have saved up can benefit.