New Zealand’s universities accommodated record numbers of foreign students last year, as the country’s international education industry continued its pivot towards higher levels of study, statistics show.
The eight universities shared a combined 38,000 overseas enrolments in 2025, 14 per cent more than in 2024 and 12 per cent more than in the pre-pandemic peak year of 2019.
Universities’ share of foreign students has risen substantially, with the sector claiming 41 per cent of international enrolments in 2025 – up from 29 per cent in 2019 and 21 per cent in 2016.
The figures, compiled by Education New Zealand (ENZ), show that higher education has rebounded from Covid-19 more strongly than other educational sectors, most of which have not yet recovered their 2019 numbers.
The other exception is the private training establishment (PTE) sector, where about 14,300 foreign students were enrolled last year, compared with 13,700 in 2019. However, PTE enrolments remain well below their peak of about 43,000 in the middle of last decade, before the New Zealand Qualifications Authority cracked down on poor-quality colleges.
