The economic downturn will force thousands of youngsters to defer entering university. More than 20 million Americans lost their jobs in April 2020 alone. Students from outside the UK and EU contribute about £6·9 billion in yearly fees to British universities. Encouraged by successive governments, who wished to bolster commercial education, institutions have come to rely on this money, which represents about a third of the total income from tuition fees. A collapse in the international student market, which seems inevitable, would have serious consequences. Australia is similarly exposed. Its higher education sector hosts more 300 000 students from overseas. Terry Hartle (Vice-President of the American Council on Education, Washington, DC, USA) expects international enrolments in US universities and colleges to fall by at least a quarter in 2020–21.