Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Saturday announced that non-citizens – excluding permanent residents and their immediate family members – who arrived from or passed through mainland China within the previous 14 days would be denied entry to Australia as part of efforts to halt the spread of the coronavirus, which was first detected in December in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The travel ban, which is due to be reviewed on February 15, has upended the plans of numerous Chinese students who were due to begin or return to their studies from late February following the summer break.

Tony Yan, a mathematics undergraduate at Australian National University (ANU), said he had been left out of pocket for several weeks’ rent after being stranded in his home province of Jiangsu, but hoped he could return before classes started on February 24.

“I think the Australian government should have given a few days earlier notice,” Yan said. “I haven’t paid the tuition yet, many others haven’t as well.”

About 150,000 Chinese nationals are enrolled at Australian universities, making up around 11 per cent of the student population – a far greater proportion than in Britain and the United States, which came in at 6 per cent and 2 per cent respectively, in a 2017 report from an Australian think tank.

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ANU Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt on Saturday described the travel ban as “disappointing”, pledging that the university would be “generous and flexible in supporting our students” through the coming weeks.

Monash University in Melbourne has delayed the start of its academic year, while other universities are exploring options such as online tuition and intensive summer courses.

Australian universities, some of which rely on Chinese students for nearly one-quarter of their revenue, are bracing to take a major financial hit due to the ban.

Phil Honeywood, the head of a government task force initially set up to manage the reputation of Australia’s international education sector in the wake of the country’s bush fires crisis, on Sunday warned the ban could cost universities A$8 billion (US$5.34 billion) if Chinese students could not enrol for the first semester of the year.

Education minister Dan Tehan on Monday met with peak body Universities Australia to discuss ways to minimise fallout for the sector.

“Australia will remain an attractive study destination for Chinese students, but it may take several years for Chinese student numbers to recover,” said Salvatore Babones, associate professor at the University of Sydney and adjunct scholar at the Centre for Independent Studies. “Students who are already in the middle of a degree are likely to return at the first possible opportunity, even at the cost of missing one semester, but students who have not yet started may make other plans.”

But ANU tertiary education expert Andrew Norton said there remained too many unknowns, including the number of Chinese students stranded abroad, to gauge the impact of the ban.

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“This travel ban is a short-term policy to minimise the risk of disease spreading, which would be a more serious problem than a disruption to university timetables,” he said. “One of Australia’s major [education] competitors – the US – has a similar policy, and due to travel restrictions within China and the cancelling of commercial flights to and from China Australia’s competitors are unlikely to be able to take advantage.”

Norton noted that the sector had weathered previous outbreaks such as the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), and “although there were sometimes short-term dips in numbers, none of them have changed the long-term trend towards growth”.

With Chinese tourists spending about A$12 billion (US$8 billion) in Australia each year, according to Tourism Research Australia, every month the travel ban remains in place could amount to billion-dollar losses for the sector.

Tourism Tropical North Queensland on Monday said the outbreak had already cost operators for Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef 25,000 direct bookings worth A$10 million. Chief executive Mark Olsen said the situation constituted a crisis for the industry that called for “unprecedented action” by the government.

David Beirman, senior lecturer in tourism at the University of Technology Sydney, said the ban was especially damaging for the industry as it came on the heels of devastating bush fires that had kept visitors away.

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“There is no doubt that the coronavirus outbreak following on so closely to the bush fires will combine to hit international tourism to Australia very hard,” Beirman said. “Later this month the Australian Bureau of Statistics will reveal the December 2019 tourism figures, which are expected to show at best a 25 per cent downturn in international visitor arrivals compared to December 2018. January 2020 is likely to be far worse as the impact of coronavirus will certainly be a factor.”

“This is an overreaction from the Australian government, and in many ways it feels like it is a form of racial targeting,” said Erin Chew, national convenor of the Asian Australian Alliance. “When previous viruses happened such as mad cow disease or the swine flu, Australia didn’t ban non-citizens from Britain and the US. Nor was the blame placed on the people in [those countries].

“Since the coronavirus outbreak it has been coined that this virus is the fault of Chinese people, not just in mainland China, but really all over the world.”