Global Horizons - The Australian International Education Podcast

Rob is in Basque country in the southwest of France, Dirk is back in western Sydney, and there is a lot to unpack in this episode of Global Horizons . It has been a massive fortnight for Australian international education, with major updates on student visa fees, national planning levels, ATEC, student housing and sector awards. First up, Rob and Dirk discuss the latest increase to student visa fe...

Robert Parsonson has been part of Australia’s international education story for a very long time. His first AIEC, back when it was still the IDP conference, was in Sydney in 1994. He had just returned from four years in Japan, stood up in front of a room full of people, and gave a presentation on how to work with agents and build relationships in Japan. That presentation became a launchpad. In thi...

Rob is in Paris, Dirk is in Sydney, and this episode of Global Horizons covers UNSW overtaking Melbourne as Australia’s top-ranked university in QS, the latest net overseas migration figures, and what the OECD is saying about the future of international student growth. They also discuss why students are only one part of the migration story, why universities need to share more positive stories, and...

Nicola Bate’s story begins, in a way, with a woman loading bags at Heathrow. Her mum, a single mother in West London, took a job with British Airways because it paid a little more, came with staff travel, and gave her the chance to show her young daughter the world. So while other kids came back from school holidays with stories from around the corner, Nicola came back with stories from Australia,...

Perhaps it’s time we chose them. That line sits near the heart of this episode of Global Horizons , and it lands with a bit of a thud — in the best possible way. In this news episode, Rob Malicki and Dirk Mulder are both on the road: Rob in a rainy Brisbane on Turrbal and Yuggera land, and Dirk in a very warm, very sunny Darwin on Larrakia country. Which, naturally, leads to a brief weather compar...

When Rob Malicki sits down with Mark Pettitt, the conversation begins in a place few people would expect: Rostov-on-Don in the mid-1990s. What starts as a childhood fascination with Russia, sparked by reading Animal Farm , turns into a story about teaching English in a city near the Ukrainian border just a few years after Perestroika. Mark reflects on arriving in a place that felt harsh and unfami...

Canada, we have a problem. And, if we’re being honest, Australia might have a very similar one. In this episode of Global Horizons , Rob Malicki and Dirk Mulder unpack a week in international education that starts with Canada’s positioning problem and quickly turns into a much bigger conversation about policy clarity, political trust, skilled migration, international students, VET, and whether gov...

This week on Global Horizons, we're doing something a little different. Last week, Rob Malicki delivered a keynote for the Choosing Your Uni National Virtual Expo. It was a huge event with thousands upon thousands of attendees. His keynote was titled "Getting Started with Choosing a University", but it was actually much broader, focusing on career directions, how to know when it'...

In this episode of the Global Horizons podcast, Rob Malicki and Dirk Mulder record on budget day and work through a packed run of developments affecting international education. They start with two major new research releases from IDP and Studyportals, both pointing to the same broad shift: visa certainty is becoming a much more important factor in student decision-making. From there, they discuss...

What does it take to stay calm in a sector that seems determined to keep everyone on their toes? If you ask Guie Hartney, it might start with a smile, a little perspective, and a willingness to embrace the chaos. In this warm, funny and wide-ranging conversation, Guie reflects on a life shaped by travel, language, resilience and curiosity. From growing up in Mexico and moving to Australia, to work...

In this episode of the Global Horizons podcast, Rob Malicki and Dirk Mulder focus on one issue that is dominating the sector right now: visas. They begin with John Chew’s recent commentary on the growing lack of clarity, consistency and trust in Australia’s student visa system, and what that means for institutions, students and the country’s reputation more broadly. From there, they unpack new dat...

When I sat down with Tom Gifford, I knew we’d end up talking about international education. What I didn’t quite expect was that we’d begin with a backpacker visa panic, a wrongly dated Qantas ticket, and one very stern airline employee who may, in her own quiet way, have changed the course of his life. Because that’s the thing about conversations like this one. What starts as a chat about careers...

In this episode of the Koala News Global Horizons podcast, Rob Malicki and Dirk Mulder discuss the economic and policy backdrop shaping international education right now. They unpack growing recession concerns, the role international education plays in local and national economies, and the gap between the public narrative around the sector and what the data may actually be telling us. They also lo...

When I sat down with Michelle Teasdale at UWA, looking out across Matilda Bay on one of those impossibly beautiful Perth days, I knew we’d have a good conversation. What I didn’t quite expect was just how far the conversation would travel. What starts with a slightly-too-familiar international education story about lost luggage quickly opens out into something much richer: childhood in the Pilbara...

Evidence levels are out, the “new to Australia” data paints a sharper picture of what’s really happening, Randwick Council blocks new student housing near UNSW, and Allianz Partners drops a standout student wellbeing report. Rob Malicki and Dirk Mulder unpack the implications, then bring in guest Sam Eid to talk through what the 2025 State of Student Healthcare Report reveals about student life in...

What begins as a lively conversation at AIEC quickly becomes something much deeper. In this episode, Tanya Perera reflects on migration, mentorship, values, and the quiet experiences that shape a life in international education. From arriving in Australia from Sri Lanka at 13, to navigating identity, leadership and belonging, Tanya brings warmth, insight and more than a little humour to a conversa...

In this episode of the Koala News Global Horizons podcast, Dirk Mulder and Rob Malicki unpack another big week in international education. They discuss the ongoing uncertainty around student visas, why inconsistent decision-making is creating real problems for providers, and what that could mean for institutions in the months ahead. They also touch on the Queensland Exporters Conference, some of t...

Naresh Gulati has been in international education since the mid-90s. He helped build one of the largest education agencies in India, then founded BPO Intelligence, and now is driving the rise (pun intended) of Ascent One, a modular ecosystem designed to reduce admin chaos by helping systems talk to each other. But instead of giving you a standard “here’s how I scaled” playbook, this conversation o...

Who would have guessed? Out of the blue on Sunday, the Government announced the doubling of the cost of one of the key student-related visas. Dirk Mulder and Tracy Harris from The Koala News were right on it, with the breaking news hitting inboxes within hours. It just shows why industry news is so important! This week is a bumper episode of the podcast, including our special guest Michael Holaday...

When I sat down with Ainslie Moore , I thought we’d spend 45 minutes doing what we’ve almost never done in the past 25 years: talk without an agenda. We made it about 30 seconds. Because Ainslie opens with the kind of confession that tells you exactly what sort of episode this is going to be, she has a “flight home story” she “will not tell the rest of the world”… and then casually admits she once...

“This report reads almost like a postmortem of a world-class Aussie industry being systematically dismantled.” That’s how this week’s conversation starts, and honestly, it sets the tone. In this episode of Global Horizons, Dirk Mulder and I sit down in the week of 16 February and try to make sense of a sector that feels like it’s accelerating in ten different directions at once. New data, new pane...

When I sat down with Ian Aird, the CEO of English Australia, I expected we’d talk mostly about the sector’s current policy turbulence, and what it’s like trying to advocate when the rules keep shifting. We absolutely go there. But what I didn’t expect was how quickly the conversation turned into something more personal, more human, and (weirdly) more useful for anyone trying to make sense of caree...

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 pol...

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 No...

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 conferenc...