"In China, the reputation of the university is important. The reason I came here is because the rank of the University of Sydney is very high. "If you let me go to a lower ranking school, my parents wouldn’t give me the money or support me coming over [to Australia]," she said. Elaine Pan, also from China and who is also studying at the University of Sydney, said she only applied to universities in Sydney or Melbourne that had strong academic reputations. "[If you did go study at a regional university] people would think you are not capable of learning at good universities, they would doubt you and your abilities," she said. Chinese student Zoe, who declined to give her surname, said reputation was a "priority" in Chinese culture.

"They would be shocked and not think you are a successful student or have a successful future [if you studied in a regional area]," she said. Others feared regional universities would not have the facilities, such as teachers or language support, to provide them with the education they wanted. "The reason we come here is to go to better universities and build international contacts. If we go to smaller universities, we won’t get that," Neil Lui said. Tread carefully, universities warn The universities, in turn, have urged the government to tread carefully, warning its proposal could jeopardise the state's multibillion-dollar international education industry.

Universities Australia chief executive Catriona Jackson said NSW universities would need to see a "very careful assessment of any proposals and their likely impact" before they could support the Premier's incentives plan. Universities Australia chief executive Catriona Jackson said she would need to consider the proposal and its impacts before supporting the plan. Credit:Eamon Gallagher "International education is a $32 billion industry for Australia, and generates $11.3 billion for NSW – the lion’s share of any state or territory," Ms Jackson said. "The last thing governments or universities want is to harm our ability to attract international students." Ms Jackson's comments come as NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian returned on Wednesday from a Council of Australian Governments meeting in Adelaide, where she proposed using incentives as a means to redirect overseas students to the state's regions so as to relieve population pressures on Sydney.

Speaking after the meeting, Ms Berejiklian said the proposal would require "Commonwealth and state co-operation, given the overlap between university policy and state policy". Ms Berejiklian said incentives would help "grow our regional communities" but did not elaborate on what form they would take - for example, financial or visa-related incentives. Premier Gladys Berejiklian proposed the use of incentives to attract foreign students to the regions. Credit:James Alcock An estimated 220,000 of the 400,000 temporary migrants in NSW are international students. A population advisory panel, convened by the Premier last month, found 98.8 per cent of all international students attend tertiary institutions in Sydney, with the remaining 1.2 per cent in regional NSW. Sydney-based institutions, such as the University of Sydney, would suffer a hit to revenue streams if a sizeable chunk of their annual incoming international student cohort was redirected towards regional centres.

Loading In 2017, the University of Sydney taught more than 19,000 international students from more than 130 countries, with full-fee-paying overseas student generating a $752.2 million income for the university that year. A University of Sydney spokeswoman said any strategies to boost overseas student enrolments in regional areas should be "carefully designed", and take into account factors such as the availability of courses, internships and graduate opportunities. International students accounted for a third of the 45,000 enrolments at the University of Technology Sydney in 2018. A spokesman declined to comment on the Premier's proposal, citing a need for "more details". Professor Andrew Vann, the vice-chancellor of Charles Sturt University, which has six major regional campuses, said the government needed to "actively communicate the benefits students can receive by studying at a non-metropolitan university".