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 conference, this episode is a warm, funny, occasionally brutal reality check on what international student support really looks like when it is done properly. Melanie takes us from the classic student-services moments you laugh about later, to the high-stakes cases that stay with you for years, and the quiet expertise it takes to hold it all together.

Along the way, we unpack:

• Why the best practitioners become masters of the right question at the right time

• What “visa-informed” support actually means, and why it cannot be replaced by a knowledge base

• The cultural faux pas that shaped Melanie’s early years, and the training that changed everything

• How “international student services” is being mainstreamed, and why Melanie calls it a dying art

• The political rhetoric that has fuelled uncertainty for students, and frustration across the sector

• The part nobody wants to talk about: COVID, staff cuts, and losing experienced practitioners when students still needed them

• What it is like to step out of institutions and build a consulting business built on one idea, compliance done well should equal a better student experience

There’s mentorship, nostalgia, a few sharp edges, and a genuine reminder that international education is still full of people who care deeply, even when the systems around them make it harder than it should be.

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

It’s the first Global Horizons News episode of 2026, and Rob Malicki and Dirk Mulder are back at the desk with that familiar mix of “happy new year” energy and “wait, what changed while we were away?” realism.

They start with PRISMS and a South Asia assessment-level update that feels, frankly, out of cycle and out of sync. The headline move is Bangladesh, which only recently moved up, now dropping two assessment levels in one hit, and it sets off a wider conversation about policy volatility, recruitment strategy, and just how hard it is to plan when the goalposts keep shifting.

Along the way, you’ll hear them unpack:

• The South Asia assessment level changes (including Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka), and why the timing matters for providers trying to plan recruitment responsibly

• The question hanging over it all: what triggers these changes, and should a ministerial trip be enough to reshape settings this quickly?

• A rare moment of mainstream coverage, including a news.com.au write-up, and a longer sit-down interview with Phil Honeywood on Channel 7’s The Issue

Then the conversation moves to ATEC and a detail that could easily slip past most people unless you’re watching legislation closely. Dirk draws on analysis from Andrew Norton to explain how international student allocations, and the power to cap, could be embedded through the proposed Australian Tertiary Education Commission, with serious questions about independence, process, and years of compounding uncertainty.

They also cover:

• What ATEC’s role could mean in practice if international student allocations become one of its key functions, and why that design choice raises eyebrows

• TEQSA’s new requirements for offshore delivery approvals, including the looming reality of application fees and yet more compliance weight on transnational education activity

And then, in the spirit of not leaving you in a pure regulatory fog, they finish with an actual milestone worth pausing for: Adelaide University is now live, the new combined institution born from the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia. There’s congratulations, curiosity about rankings impact, and a few side-eye questions about what happens next, in Adelaide and possibly beyond.

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 AngeloAblao.

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

In this episode of Global Horizons, Peter and I wander through three and a half decades of international education, from the days when Wollongong was considered “aggressive” for opening an office in Japan, to the launch and heartbreaking end of The Scholar Ship, to his 15 years shaping JMC’s international work in the creative industries. Along the way we talk about caps, fairness, and why policy settings have hit the private sector so much harder than universities.

You will hear us dig into:

• How The Scholar Ship created a “university at sea” focused on intercultural leadership, and why the GFC and oil prices brought it undone

• What it felt like to watch that ship sail into Sydney Harbour and realise you had helped build something genuinely world class

• The leap from federal government land surveyor to running Wollongong’s Japan office, and then setting up ANU’s regional office in Bangkok

• The strange joy and terror of consulting life, from currency swings that wipe out your margin overnight to clients who keep pulling you back

• Why Peter fell in love with Japan, Sweden and Vietnam, and what those countries taught him about creative talent and mobility

  
  

From there we shift into the creative industries and the future. Peter reflects on 15 years at JMC, why he is bullish on performance and the arts in an age of AI and virtual production, and how Swedish arts high schools and emerging Vietnamese creatives are reshaping the pipeline of global talent. Music is still music, he argues, and performance is still performance, even if the tools keep changing.

We also get very real about the past few years in Australia:

• How the student caps and immigration debates have disproportionately damaged the private sector

• The quiet injustice of private provider students being shut out of the New Colombo Plan and OS-HELP

• Why Peter thinks Australia’s historic strength in relationship building is being undermined by bureaucracy and short term politics

• The danger of becoming a “fairweather friend” to partners who remember who stuck with them when times were hard

One of my favourite parts of the conversation is Peter’s story of COVID at JMC. While others were cutting, he bet that, like previous crises, the downturn would last about two years. JMC kept its international team intact, especially in-country staff in Indonesia and Malaysia, moved people onto projects where needed, and doubled down on relationships. The result was their best ever international intake in February 2022, up 35 per cent on 2019.

We finish with advice for students and early career professionals. It is simple and hard to argue with: go somewhere. It does not have to be Australia, or any particular country. Just go. Peter went to Japan with a backpack and a bit of Japanese, and everything that followed, from Bangkok to Latin America to the creative industries, unfolded from that single decision to leave home.

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