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 booked a train from London to Brussels because she thought that’s where The Hague was.

From there, we’re off. Travel disasters, sliding-door moments, and the deeper thread underneath it all: how someone goes from being a 17-year-old international student with a life-changing exchange experience, to becoming a proper policy operator who can move a whole system with the right alliance, the right incentives, and the right message.

And yes, we do get into the line of the episode: people call it “herding cats” when you’re trying to coordinate universities, but the secret to herding cats is moving the food bowl.

• Ainslie’s first overseas trip at 17: turbulence, flooded toilets, and a mid-flight hostage threat involving a statue… which somehow ended up in Women’s Day.

• The exchange year in Spain that changed everything, including the moment she realised she could become someone braver, louder, more confident than the “shy person” she arrived as.

• A brilliant, plain-English lesson in what Universities Australia used to be, back when it was still the Australian Vice-Chancellors’ Committee (AVCC).

• Policy advice that actually helps: don’t do it alone, find shared interest, build an alliance, and remember communication matters as much as the policy.

• Why climate action has become unavoidable in international education, including student expectations and what CANIE exists to push the sector to do (beyond “we teach sustainability”).

• Ainslie’s New Zealand reality check: small can be nimble, good ideas can move fast, and policy can go from paper to legislation inside a year.

It’s funny, too, how the conversation keeps flipping between the “romance” of international education (travel, language, identity, becoming more yourself) and the machinery that makes it possible (policy settings, incentives, and the behind-the-scenes work nobody sees). It’s two sides of the same coin, and Ainslie lives right at the centre of it.

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

Episode highlights

“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 panels, new policy pressure, and the kind of political rhetoric that has a habit of turning complex issues into easy headlines.

We begin with English Australia’s newly released 2025 visa data, and it is bleak reading for anyone who cares about the health of the broader international education ecosystem. The numbers point to a sustained contraction in independent ELICOS visas, and the flow-on effects are not abstract. They are people, jobs, institutions, and capability.

Then, we shift to the International Student Representative Council, which is making a meaningful move towards rebuilding a stronger national student voice, appointing an inaugural expert panel with serious credentials. It is one of those developments that might sound procedural on paper, but could matter a lot if it helps restore advocacy and legitimacy in a space that has been battered since COVID.

Along the way, we dig into an unusual sign of public pushback from within the sector, a change.org petition targeting the onshore commission ban, and what that might signal about the next phase of industry response.

A few highlights we unpack in this episode:

• English Australia’s 2025 data, and why the visa fee settings hit ELICOS differently to higher education

• The estimated job impact, and what it means when an industry loses capacity, not just revenue

• The International Student Representative Council’s expert panel, and why student voice has been missing for too long

• The onshore commission ban petition, the ethics, the optics, and the unintended consequences for genuine student support

• Germany’s record-breaking growth as an alternate destination, and why it keeps coming up in these conversations

• AIEC is already on the horizon, key dates, and a gentle nudge to new voices to put their hand up

We also take a quick detour into AI, not as a gimmick, but because it is becoming impossible to ignore how fast expectations are shifting, especially for students. The default is rapidly becoming instant answers, personalised guidance, and always-on support, and that changes the bar for everyone.

By the end, this episode is less about one headline and more about a pattern. Where policy settings land hardest. Who gets protected, who gets squeezed, and what the global market does when Australia decides to “de-scale” an export industry that has spent decades building trust.

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

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 careers, leadership, and what “good decisions” actually look like in real life.

Because Ian’s path to the “big chair” wasn’t a neat, straight-line plan. It was part instinct, part risk, part luck, and part turning up in Spain with basically no plan at all, walking the streets with a CV, and hoping the bank account didn’t hit zero first.

And then there’s the moment that still makes me laugh: he was lined up to go to Japan… until he found out he’d have to cut his hair. Except it’s not really about the hair. It’s about the sliding-door moments, the tiny decisions that end up shaping the whole story, and what happens when you actually ask the question you’re “not supposed” to ask.

In this episode, we get into:

• What it’s really like stepping into a CEO role mid-whirlwind, including Ian’s brutally honest version of “strategy” in a small organisation (hint: triage).

• Why the last two years have felt uniquely chaotic, from visa and legislative change through to constant policy pivots.

• COVID as a career breaker and a career re-route, and the uncomfortable realisation that the world has now learned it can shut borders fast, and do it again.

• What today’s students need that they did not used to, including the hidden “life skills gap” for students who lost formative years to lockdowns, and why support needs are higher than many people realise.

• Why language is not just words, and why the “earpiece that translates everything” still misses the point of learning how humans actually communicate.

There’s a part of the conversation where we’re talking about Year 12 exams and the pressure young people feel to “get it right” right now, and Ian says something that should be printed on a sticker and slapped onto half the careers advice floating around out there: “Don’t convey that what you do now will lock you in for life.”

It’s a simple line, but it cuts straight through the panic. Yes, some decisions matter. But the myth that one choice defines you forever is, in Ian’s words, absolute garbage.

And because I can’t resist a good left turn, we also end up in Southeast Asia, the chaos of learning how to cross a road in a new country, and why being overwhelmed is sometimes exactly the point.

If you work in international education, advocacy, student experience, or you’re just trying to build a career that does not feel like a straightjacket, I think you’ll enjoy this one.

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