The government recently announced that a freeze on study visa applications would end on 31 July and students with existing visas could also return then.
However, Education agents warn that foreign students are not queuing up to return to New Zealand next year and the International student market unlikely to recover quickly.
Immigration lawyer Alastair McClymont said the government's changes were likely to slash enrolments from India and China, the two biggest source countries for international students.
"The general feeling is that the export education industry is going to take a massive hit. There's going to be dramatically reduced numbers of international students coming to New Zealand, and particularly from the traditional markets of India and China where the reception seems to be that Indian and Chinese students in particular are no longer welcome here in New Zealand," he said.
"I don't think we're going to be getting very many students at all from India, the numbers from China are going to be very much reduced, and the new markets that the government seems to be looking at, traditionally those are markets where the students have been looking elsewhere, they've been looking predominantly to the United States or to Europe for study and not to New Zealand or Australia."
Immigration and education agent Arunima Dhingra said students' attitude to NZ had changed since before the pandemic.
"Previously we would see people jump straight away: 'Yeah New Zealand, let's get there’. We're not seeing that kind of enthusiasm at this stage. People that want to come here will definitely come here, but it's not for everybody now. These policies have definitely cut that chunk that we were normally catering to, and they'll probably be looking at other countries," she said.
Dhingra said many courses that used to attract Indian and Chinese students no longer grant the right to work after graduation.
She also worried the rules were unrealistic in requiring students to find employment in the profession they had studied, rather than recognising that people often found a job lower down the career ladder and worked up to the position they had trained for.
"We're definitely going to see a drop, and then we might see rejigging of some of those policies to increase those numbers," she said.
Bridget Egan, who runs Global Student, which recruits international students heading to secondary schools and universities, said some students had held out for NZ, but most had chosen to go somewhere else.
"It's an uphill battle. The big majority of students are students that are floating out there who are deciding which country in the world they want to go and study," she said.
Egan said she had seen no evidence that the government's handling of the pandemic would help attract students.
"We haven't heard that from students. If anything we've had students really annoyed that there hasn't been a lot of signalling around when they'll be able to travel to New Zealand.
Egan said the government needs to talk more to agents about reviving the industry, rather than focusing on education providers.
