Australia’s shaken image as an academic destination for international students cannot simply be fixed with new marketing, a plenary speaker at the Australian International Education Conference told higher-education officials here.
The number of foreign students in the country is on the decline, triggered in part by attacks on Indian students in 2008 and 2009, and by investigations into shady private colleges that offered courses like cooking and hairdressing only to help people immigrate and become permanent residents. In response, the government has tightened student visa rules.
Describing Australia as “a dumb blonde, more in the decorative than useful category of nations,” Simon Anholt, an expert on national identity and branding, said the country needed to emphasize how its educational system can be of use to Asian nations.
“Education is the best gift anyone can offer, and Australia is in a unique position to offer its services to the rising Asian powers,” said Mr. Anholt.
Australia has set out to promote itself as a center of scientific and innovative thinking, but a new logo alone will not appeal to the rest of the world, he said.
Other speakers and panelists raised similar concerns during the conference, which is titled “Engaging With the Future” and has almost 1,300 attendees from 32 countries.
According to the Australian government, enrollments by international students declined by 0.4 percent in the 12-month period starting August 2009. Those declines were driven by steep drops in English-language classes.
Colleges and universities are still experiencing a rise in enrollments by students from abroad but predict the numbers will decline in 2012 in part because English-language institutes often feed students into universities. Some signs of that impending falloff have appeared already with enrollments by Indian students into university courses falling 19 percent.
The country’s leading universities recently asked the Australian government to consider revising immigration regulations as a result.
Some conference participants expressed frustration that the government had not done more to ameliorate educators’ concerns.
“We are unhappy about the government responsibility and its failure to see beyond the dollar signs,” said Anthony Pollock, chief executive of IDP Education, a company that recruits students and offers English-langauge testing. Public officials “have taken a long time to get beyond this to the importance of Australia’s relations with the rest of the world.”
Despite this, Mr. Pollock was optimistic, saying that Australia is looking at only one more year of difficulty before enrollment rates turn around.
Private colleges have “already managed the transition to courses more relevant to the students, and we just need to stay engaged in the region,” he said about Asia.
Gulshan Kumar, president of the Association of Australian Education Representatives in India, however, said the country needed to ease rules for foreign students if it wants to get them back. For example, he said Australia requires Indian students to prove they have the necessary funds to pay for their education costs for several years.
Mr. Kumar said that the rules should be changed so that more students—and those who are genuinely interested in studying—will start to apply to Australian institutions again. “We need to go to a reasonable system of showing funding for one year,” he said.
Rising Dollar Creates Cost
Rising education costs have also been a burden for foreign students, with the value of the Australian dollar rising in recent years, said Melissa Banks, director of Banks Consulting, a higher-education consulting company in Melbourne.
“We are now the most expensive country to live in as a foreign student,” she said. “It is now 30 percent cheaper for a Chinese student to study in the U.S. than in Australia.”
While currency rates are something the government has little control over, Canberra can help international students with other policy changes, said Simon Marginson, a professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne.
He suggested that the government not view student-visa holders as part of its effort to lower overseas immigration levels.
While visas are a huge issue, security is another problem that discourages student enrollments.
“Most students say they feel safe in the country, but it’s their parents who see what’s happening on TV and worry that it might be the wrong place to send their children,” said Stephen Connelly, president of International Education Association of Australia.
One way to deal with safety—and to reduce costs for students—is for the federal and state governments to support subsidized housing for domestic and foreign students, said Mr. Connelly.
He said in Victoria, for example, universities and other education programs generate $5-billion annually, but the state government only contributes a “tiny amount” of $13-million to $14-million every few years.
Mr. Marginson agreed. “A major infrastructure program, federally financed, to create student housing for mixed local and international populations ... makes housing available and affordable, gets internationals off the public transport lines late at night, and it is the best way to bring the two groups of students together so that deep and lasting friendships form,” he said.