I didn’t think, in my life, that I’d be recording a podcast… and I definitely didn’t think I’d be talking about taxation in India. Yet here we are.

In this episode of Global Horizons, Rob Malicki and Dirk Mulder are back for 2026, slightly dazed by how January vanished, and diving straight into the stories that are shaping the international education conversation right now.

We start with the politics-meets-perception problem. Net overseas migration is down (the numbers have shifted materially), but the public debate is still running at full volume. Dirk breaks down the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics release and why departures are a big part of the story that often gets missed. Then we get into student housing, including the latest student accommodation signals coming through from Barnard’s reporting on purpose-built student accommodation demand.

A few highlights we unpack along the way:

• What the latest migration figures suggest, and why the “bubble” effect post-COVID is still working its way through

• Why departures matter just as much as arrivals when people talk about students and housing

• The global trend in purpose-built student accommodation demand, and what’s changing in student expectations

• The surprisingly important India tax changes that could reduce friction and cost for families sending money overseas

• The submissions closing for the Australian Tertiary Education Commission legislative review, and why the sector is nervous about how decisions get made

Then we bring in our guest, Jessie Gardner Russell, National President of Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations. Jessie takes us inside the reality of postgraduate life right now, including food insecurity, cost-of-living pressure, and why career support is showing up as a much bigger need for international postgrads than domestic students.

Jessie also explains CAPA’s work on a big, practical question: if PhD stipends sit below the poverty line, what does that do to research productivity nationally, and what happens if you fix it?

We also cover:

• The HECS repayment threshold change, and why it matters for fresh grads

• The placement payment, what it solves, and where the gaps still are (hello, allied health)

• The employment support problem for international postgrads, and why it’s a missed opportunity Australia can’t really afford

If you’re trying to make sense of the headlines, or you’re working inside the sector and want the deeper context behind the noise, this one is for you.

Global Horizons is a production of The Global Society, Australia’s Learning Abroad support company. Our editor is Len Zamora and our distribution specialist is Angelo Ablao.

Rob Malicki is the executive editor and host. The podcast wouldn’t be possible without The Koala News, Australia’s international education news website. This episode is supported by Choosing Your Uni, Australia's unique, AI-powered platform that helps domestic and international students to find the right institution for them, and that helps Australian institutions to access new markets.

For guest suggestions and feedback, email podcast@globalsociety.com.au

Dominic de Moura McCarthy is one of those guests who makes you quietly sit up straighter.

He’s 24, he’s done ballet for 15 years, he taught himself how to build a personal brand before most of us even knew what that meant, and he’s the kind of person who doesn’t wait for an “official invitation” to start something meaningful.

When Dom joins me on Global Horizons, we go back to Mackay, regional North Queensland, where a teenage decision to study French (because ballet terminology is French, of course) became a hinge moment that eventually led him overseas, into the New Colombo Plan, and deep into youth leadership work across the Pacific and Latin America.

There’s a sliding-doors moment early on too: Dom moves to Brisbane to study dance at QUT, hears a blunt “this course isn’t for you unless you want to dance every day”, ends up in hospital that first week, and makes the call to switch to business instead. That one decision quietly changes the trajectory of everything that follows.

Along the way, we get tactical about visibility and influence. Not the braggy kind, but the “how do you show up and contribute when you don’t feel like the expert” kind. We talk imposter syndrome, tall poppy syndrome, why community service can be the best personal brand strategy going around, and how Dom’s faith and sense of service keep him moving when most people would hesitate.

In this episode, we cover:

• Dom’s “French via ballet” origin story, and how Distance Education pre-COVID shaped his confidence

• The New Colombo Plan experience that turned curiosity into a global pathway

• The QUT-to-business switch, and how to make a call when you’re terrified of closing doors

• Personal branding without the show pony energy, plus practical ways to build the muscle

• Why volunteering and youth development work can become your sharpest leadership training

• A rare honest chat about setbacks, and why most people don’t reflect on them enough

Global Horizons is a production of The Global Society, Australia’s Learning Abroad support company. Our editor is Len Zamora and our distribution specialist is Gelo Ablao. Rob Malicki is the executive editor and host. The podcast wouldn’t be possible without The Koala News, Australia’s international education news website. This episode is supported by Choosing Your Uni, Australia's unique, AI-powered platform that helps domestic and international students to find the right institution for them, and that helps Australian institutions to access new markets. For guest suggestions and feedback, email podcast@globalsociety.com.au

A student storms into Melanie Duncan’s office in tears, shaking with certainty that Australia is an “awful place”… because we eat our dogs.

The evidence? He saw “dog bones” at the supermarket.

It sounds ridiculous, until you realise what Melanie has spent nearly three decades learning the hard way: without context, even the most well-meaning support can miss the mark.

Recorded at the IEC conference, this episode is a warm, funny, occasionally brutal reality check on what international student support really looks like when it is done properly. Melanie takes us from the classic student-services moments you laugh about later, to the high-stakes cases that stay with you for years, and the quiet expertise it takes to hold it all together.

Along the way, we unpack:

• Why the best practitioners become masters of the right question at the right time

• What “visa-informed” support actually means, and why it cannot be replaced by a knowledge base

• The cultural faux pas that shaped Melanie’s early years, and the training that changed everything

• How “international student services” is being mainstreamed, and why Melanie calls it a dying art

• The political rhetoric that has fuelled uncertainty for students, and frustration across the sector

• The part nobody wants to talk about: COVID, staff cuts, and losing experienced practitioners when students still needed them

• What it is like to step out of institutions and build a consulting business built on one idea, compliance done well should equal a better student experience

There’s mentorship, nostalgia, a few sharp edges, and a genuine reminder that international education is still full of people who care deeply, even when the systems around them make it harder than it should be.

Global Horizons is a production of The Global Society, Australia’s Learning Abroad support company. Our editor is Len Zamora and our distribution specialist is Angelo Ablao. Rob Malicki is the executive editor and host. The podcast wouldn’t be possible without The Koala News, Australia’s international education news website. This episode is supported by Choosing Your Uni, Australia's unique, AI-powered platform that helps domestic and international students to find the right institution for them, and that helps Australian institutions to access new markets.

For guest suggestions and feedback, email podcast@globalsociety.com.au

It’s the first Global Horizons News episode of 2026, and Rob Malicki and Dirk Mulder are back at the desk with that familiar mix of “happy new year” energy and “wait, what changed while we were away?” realism.

They start with PRISMS and a South Asia assessment-level update that feels, frankly, out of cycle and out of sync. The headline move is Bangladesh, which only recently moved up, now dropping two assessment levels in one hit, and it sets off a wider conversation about policy volatility, recruitment strategy, and just how hard it is to plan when the goalposts keep shifting.

Along the way, you’ll hear them unpack:

• The South Asia assessment level changes (including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka), and why the timing matters for providers trying to plan recruitment responsibly

• The question hanging over it all: what triggers these changes, and should a ministerial trip be enough to reshape settings this quickly?

• A rare moment of mainstream coverage, including a news.com.au write-up, and a longer sit-down interview with Phil Honeywood on Channel 7’s The Issue

Then the conversation moves to ATEC and a detail that could easily slip past most people unless you’re watching legislation closely. Dirk draws on analysis from Andrew Norton to explain how international student allocations, and the power to cap, could be embedded through the proposed Australian Tertiary Education Commission, with serious questions about independence, process, and years of compounding uncertainty.

They also cover:

• What ATEC’s role could mean in practice if international student allocations become one of its key functions, and why that design choice raises eyebrows

• TEQSA’s new requirements for offshore delivery approvals, including the looming reality of application fees and yet more compliance weight on transnational education activity

And then, in the spirit of not leaving you in a pure regulatory fog, they finish with an actual milestone worth pausing for: Adelaide University is now live, the new combined institution born from the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia. There’s congratulations, curiosity about rankings impact, and a few side-eye questions about what happens next, in Adelaide and possibly beyond.

Global Horizons is a production of The Global Society, Australia’s Learning Abroad support company. Our editor is Len Zamora and our distribution specialist is AngeloAblao.

Rob Malicki is the executive editor and host. The podcast wouldn’t be possible without The Koala News, Australia’s international education news website.

This episode is supported by Choosing Your Uni, Australia's unique, AI-powered platform that helps domestic and international students to find the right institution for them, and that helps Australian institutions to access new markets.

For guest suggestions and feedback, email podcast@globalsociety.com.au

In this episode of Global Horizons, Peter and I wander through three and a half decades of international education, from the days when Wollongong was considered “aggressive” for opening an office in Japan, to the launch and heartbreaking end of The Scholar Ship, to his 15 years shaping JMC’s international work in the creative industries. Along the way we talk about caps, fairness, and why policy settings have hit the private sector so much harder than universities.

You will hear us dig into:

• How The Scholar Ship created a “university at sea” focused on intercultural leadership, and why the GFC and oil prices brought it undone

• What it felt like to watch that ship sail into Sydney Harbour and realise you had helped build something genuinely world class

• The leap from federal government land surveyor to running Wollongong’s Japan office, and then setting up ANU’s regional office in Bangkok

• The strange joy and terror of consulting life, from currency swings that wipe out your margin overnight to clients who keep pulling you back

• Why Peter fell in love with Japan, Sweden and Vietnam, and what those countries taught him about creative talent and mobility

  
  

From there we shift into the creative industries and the future. Peter reflects on 15 years at JMC, why he is bullish on performance and the arts in an age of AI and virtual production, and how Swedish arts high schools and emerging Vietnamese creatives are reshaping the pipeline of global talent. Music is still music, he argues, and performance is still performance, even if the tools keep changing.

We also get very real about the past few years in Australia:

• How the student caps and immigration debates have disproportionately damaged the private sector

• The quiet injustice of private provider students being shut out of the New Colombo Plan and OS-HELP

• Why Peter thinks Australia’s historic strength in relationship building is being undermined by bureaucracy and short term politics

• The danger of becoming a “fairweather friend” to partners who remember who stuck with them when times were hard

One of my favourite parts of the conversation is Peter’s story of COVID at JMC. While others were cutting, he bet that, like previous crises, the downturn would last about two years. JMC kept its international team intact, especially in-country staff in Indonesia and Malaysia, moved people onto projects where needed, and doubled down on relationships. The result was their best ever international intake in February 2022, up 35 per cent on 2019.

We finish with advice for students and early career professionals. It is simple and hard to argue with: go somewhere. It does not have to be Australia, or any particular country. Just go. Peter went to Japan with a backpack and a bit of Japanese, and everything that followed, from Bangkok to Latin America to the creative industries, unfolded from that single decision to leave home.

Global Horizons is a production of The Global Society, Australia’s Learning Abroad support company. Our editor is Len Zamora and our distribution specialist is Angelo Ablao. Rob Malicki is the executive editor and host. The podcast wouldn’t be possible without The Koala News, Australia’s international education news website. This episode is supported by Choosing Your Uni, Australia's unique, AI-powered platform that helps domestic and international students to find the right institution for them, and that helps Australian institutions to access new markets. For guest suggestions and feedback, email podcast@globalsociety.com.au

On the way back from his honeymoon, Mike Ferguson and his wife are walking across a square, headed for the airport.

Two guys come up from behind.

A knife to his throat. A gun to his wife’s head.

And somehow, unbelievably, what follows is not just a story about being mugged, it’s a story about negotiation, keeping your head, and walking away with the things that actually matter. Including, in a twist I genuinely did not see coming.

This episode starts with that kind of energy and then keeps going. Because Mike is one of those people who, the more you talk, the more you realise he’s lived about five careers and 60 countries worth of stories.

He’s worked in government, including designing the simplified student visa system, and he’s now on the university side, which means he can see the cracks, the incentives, and the misunderstandings from both directions.

Along the way, we get into the stuff the sector often talks around, but rarely says plainly: what public servants can actually commit to, why policy “boom and bust” cycles keep repeating, and why genuine consultation is not a nice-to-have, it’s the whole game.

A few highlights to listen out for:

• The honeymoon mugging story, including how you “negotiate” your way out of a nightmare.

• Mike’s case for broader engagement, consultation, and genuine co-design between government and sector, especially when integrity and sustainability are on the line

• • A lighter moment that still says a lot: childhood dreams of being a bus driver and a train driver, which might explain more about international education careers than we’d like to admit.

  
  

  It’s part travel yarn, part policy masterclass, and part reminder that international education is, at its best, built on relationships, trust, and shared goals.

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  Global Horizons is a production of The Global Society, Australia’s Learning Abroad support company. Our editor is Len Zamora and our distribution specialist is Angelo Ablao.

  Rob Malicki is the executive editor and host.

  The podcast wouldn’t be possible without The Koala News, Australia’s international education news website.

  This episode is supported by Choosing Your Uni, Australia's unique, AI-powered platform that helps domestic and international students to find the right institution for them, and that helps Australian institutions to access new markets.

  For guest suggestions and feedback, email podcast@globalsociety.com.au

G'day and welcome to Season 4 of the Global Horizons podcast!

To open up the season, Rob Malicki reflects on some of the highlights from Australian higher education from the past 12 months.

Over the past 12 months, the narrative of universities "losing their social licence" was shown to be a simply ridiculous, click-bait headline.

Here's the proof:

In the latest data, our universities taught 1,676,077 students, up 4.7%, with success also up, at 87.9% and attrition down to 12.2%.

Equity and access to higher education also moved: more First Nations, low-SES, regional and disability students getting in, and through.Institutions invested, and built, in some bigger projects than ever before: Adelaide University launches on 1 January 2026, and Edith Cowan University's $853m City campus is already energising Perth’s CBD... and it hasn't even opened yet!

Deakin University and the University of Wollongong are building real campuses in India, not fly-in deals.

Monash University is investing a Billion (yes, capital "B"!) in TRX Kuala Lumpur... such a big commitment that even the Prime Minister turned up to back it.

In the labs and libraries across Australia, our researchers continued to punch well above their weight, delivering a Nobel prize, state prizes, and countless breakthroughs from CO2 concrete to soil ecology to brain cancer.

Looking at rankings, and Australia continues to slay on a global scale. Six unis in THE top 100, ten in the top 200, and 97% of public universities ranked globally. If we look at sustainability and climate action rankings, our institutions are leading the world at just the right time, when humanity needs it most.

International education has had a mixed year (read the article by Dirk Mulder in The Koala News for the best summary of that). But on the domestic front, students are better protected and supported now than when the year began: the National Student Ombudsman is live, HELP indexation has been fixed, and the Commonwealth Prac Payments (a BRILLIANT and long overdue addition to our system) are underway. Those initiatives deserve some flames (so I'll oblige: 🔥🔥🔥).

If we truly care about Australia’s future, our university sector is the one doing the heavy lifting. It's educating our people, and driving research and innovation. In short, it's setting us up for the future. And there can't be a better way to fulfil a social license than that.

When we sat down to record this episode, it felt a bit like opening a time capsule from twelve months ago and asking, “So, how wrong were we?”

At the end of 2024, Dirk predicted a country divided into two halves, pre-election and post-election, with migration politics sitting right in the middle of it all. I went the other way and suggested life in the sector might simply slide back to “normal”. In this end-of-year wrap for 2025, we revisit those predictions, look at what actually happened, and try our luck again for 2026.

We start with the big structural shifts that have shaped the year. The ESOS bill, national code changes and constant migration rhetoric have all put pressure on different corners of the sector, from public universities with level one allocations to ELICOS, colleges and private VET providers, whose backs are firmly against the wall. At the same time, purpose-built student accommodation has been booming, TNE has become the new frontier, and TAFE has suddenly become the star of a lot more domestic conversations than it used to.

In this episode we get into:

• Policy and politics: ESOS reforms, looming national code changes in early 2026, and why migration is still the easiest lever for politicians to pull, even when the public seems tired of the debate.

• Winners and strugglers: Why public universities feel relatively comfortable, while ELICOS providers, English-only colleges and parts of private VET are staring down some real pain.

• Higher education shake-ups: From the UniSA and University of Adelaide merger and restructures at Western Sydney, to the quiet turbulence inside a range of institutions that do not always make the headlines.

• New builds and new bets: Edith Cowan’s striking new CBD campus in Perth and the broader re-shaping of the city, plus the rapid expansion of TNE in India, Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and what “TNE done well” actually has to look like.

• TAFE and the domestic pivot: The rise of trades, free or fully subsidised TAFE places, and why parents, students and careers advisers are talking about vocational routes in a very different way.

• AI hype and reality: Rob's prediction that we are heading into a disillusionment phase for AI, even as something genuinely game-changing is likely to land in the next twelve months, especially in video and teaching.

  
  

We also take a moment to look behind the microphones. Dirk opens up about the growth of The Koala News, from a gap he spotted in the market to a fully fledged independent news outlet with hundreds of thousands of views and 1.4 million events on the site this year, and why he launched a supporters campaign to keep independent media healthy.

And because it would not be a Global Horizons wrap without a bit of chaos, we finish with our annual outtakes reel.

Global Horizons is a production of The Global Society, Australia’s Learning Abroad support company. Our editor is Len Zamora and our distribution specialist is Angelo Ablao. Rob Malicki is the executive editor and host. The podcast wouldn’t be possible without The Koala News, Australia’s international education news website. This episode is supported by Choosing Your Uni, Australia's unique, AI-powered platform that helps domestic and international students to find the right institution for them, and that helps Australian institutions to access new markets.

For guest suggestions and feedback, email podcast@globalsociety.com.au