Millions of students from around the world are due back at university in the next few weeks for the start of a new term. But the COVID-19 pandemic has changed student life completely – especially for those students planning to head overseas to study.

On The Agenda with Stephen Cole this week, we consider how universities are planning to look after their international students and find out whether the cost of learning abroad is worth it in a post-COVID world.

Overseas students provide an incredibly lucrative market for many universities, so it's perhaps not a surprise they are going to extraordinary lengths to get people back to their faculties. George Holmes, vice-chancellor of the University of Bolton in the UK, tells Stephen why his university has chartered a special flight from Beijing to help its Chinese intake.

We also speak to a Chinese student hoping to return to the UK. Wang Yuetong is from Xi'an in China's Shaanxi province and has already spent 12 months in the UK before beginning her first year at Sheffield University in October.

The question many are asking is what student life will be like in the midst of a pandemic – and what universities can do to ensure the experience of studying overseas is worth it? Graham Virgo, senior pro-vice-chancellor for education at Cambridge University, explains what his institution – one of the oldest and most prestigious in the world – is doing to reassure worried students and their families.