In response to the ongoing COVID-19 — novel Coronavirus — global health emergency, on Feb. 5 the UAE suspended nearly all civilian air transport links with the mainland of the People’s Republic of China. The sole exception involves flights to and from Beijing, where passengers are being told that they must arrive at the airport a full eight hours prior to their UAE-bound flight’s departure time in order to undergo a comprehensive medical screening.

With this decision, the UAE joins a rapidly expanding group of countries that have imposed increasingly stringent restrictions on the ability of mainland Chinese travelers to enter their countries. According to the International Air Transport Association, more than 50 countries across the globe have “imposed travel restrictions and tightened visa restrictions” in an attempt to contain the diffusion of COVID-19. Among these, both the United States and Singapore now deny entry to “visitors who have been to the [People’s Republic of China] in the past 14 days,” while popular spring break destinations for NYUAD students like Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Sri Lanka have retracted mainland Chinese passport-holders’ eligibility for visa-on-arrival status.

Information courtesy of International Air Transport Association - As of Feb.14 2020.

Such measures have demonstrated both the resilience and the vulnerabilities of the international mobility upon which many universities have become dependent on a globalized age. NYUSH, slated to partially resume academic operations on Feb. 17, has resorted to a number of strategies to ensure its students’ uninhibited progress towards a “full semester of credits this semester and . . . towards their degrees”. These include the implementation of online classes, the cancellation of spring break in a bid to maximize the remainder of the academic year, and —— in a limited number of cases, subject to citizenship status or the acquisition of a student visa on short notice —— the relocation of students to the New York and Abu Dhabi campuses for the Spring semester.

Prolonged mobility restrictions, however, threaten to complicate the problems facing the international tertiary education sector. China’s Ministry of Education estimates that more than 662,000 Chinese nationals were studying at an overseas university in 2018, a figure that translates into more than 360,000 Chinese students in the United States and 100,000 in Australia].(https://fortune.com/2020/02/09/coronavirus-china-students-university/). In Canada, Chinese students account for [one-third of all international students present within the country] (https://fortune.com/2020/02/09/coronavirus-china-students-university/). As far as NYUAD’s Class of 2023 is concerned, Chinese students constitute the fourth-largest nationality represented on campus, behind only Emiratis, Americans, and South Koreans.

The financial consequences attached to any sustained restrictions would be immense. Dick Startz, Professor of Economics at the University of California in Santa Barbara, maintains that “a loss of revenue from international students would be bad for many American universities and disastrous for some”. Determining the ultimate severity of the consequences, however, is subject to how long the restrictions remain in place. According to Startz, “any really big effects would only start to happen if the Coronavirus was still not contained and travel bans were still in place by May or June when students would normally be returning to their home countries.”