Universities admit that foreign enrolments have not fallen as much as they predicted - student numbers are about seventy per cent of what they were pre-pandemic.
Foreign students are worth billions of dollars a year to the economy and universities feared a big hit from reduced numbers.
But Chris Whelan from Universities New Zealand says the country's eight universities have about 14000 foreign students between them.
He told education correspondent John Gerritsen that's astonishingly high.