With a newly elected Labor government in Australia, the country’s universities are looking for federal help to fix a pressing problem: the sharp decline in international students.
Enrollment of overseas students has dropped in recent months because of a tightening of visa rules after news-media investigations uncovered fraudulent vocational schools that cater to non-Australians. The inquiries were began after a series of attacks on Indian students and other international students who came to Australia to get vocational training.
While the decline has largely hurt English-language-training institutes, universities are concerned that it will eventually hit their campuses and finances.
The vice chancellors of the country’s top eight universities, known collectively as the Group of Eight, sent a letter this month to Prime Minister Julia Gillard and the opposition political leader, Tony Abbott of the Liberal Party, seeking their help on the issue. They want the government to examine how to ease restrictions on student visas and find ways to polish Australia’s somewhat-tarred image as an academic destination.
“Australia cannot afford to be isolated or bypassed in a more knowledge-connected world; our future will rely on strong international connections and openness,” said Fred Hilmer, vice chancellor the University of New South Wales, which is a member of the Group of Eight. “We cannot allow a decline in Australia’s reputation to gather momentum.”
In response to the letter, Chris Evans, the former minister of immigration who is now in charge of undergraduate education, said that despite concerns, Australia remains attractive to overseas students and that visa rules have helped cut down on the number of people who are using education simply as a means to enter the country.
“The Gillard government is committed to a sustainable, high-quality international education sector and values the contribution it makes to the Australian economy,” he said.
In addition to international enrollment, universities are concerned about government financing of higher education. Federal funds account for about 40 percent of university budgets, and the government is facing tight fiscal straits because of the global recession.
The Chronicle spoke with Mr. Hilmer about these concerns and what role the new government can play to solve them.
Q. What should the government do to be more welcoming to international students?
A. Severe damage is being done to Australia’s image abroad. The received message in other countries—among students, parents, and others—is that Australia does not value international students. It is imperative to balance tighter immigration rules with support for the genuine student market, along with strong messages about the value of international education.
International education, particularly study in Australia, is a big export industry for Australia, but it is much more than that. The relationships formed through international education underpin Australia’s engagement with the world, and help sustain good will, trade, and investment. They are the basis of future research collaboration.
They open doors for Australia, make Australia’s creative and intellectual assets more visible to other countries, and create ties of mutual advantage. They provide access to new ideas and technologies that underpin national innovation.
Q. How will the universities be affected by the decline in international students?
A. The stronger universities are weathering the situation better, but if we look beyond a year or so, universities could also be affected. English-language vocational schools are down from 5 to 30 percent in enrollments, and a number of these students come the following year to the main universities. What we would see here is a blip rather than a real trend that things are going to go bad all around. And what is needed is preventive action. At my university in Sydney we have students from 135 countries and we are not dependent on any one type of student to fill the seats, but those that are more dependent on Indian students, for example, are suffering because these were the students who were attacked last year.
Q. What needs to be done to better regulate vocational schools?
A. We have been critical of the government in that the regulatory regime has tarred everyone with the same brush. But the fact is that private vocational schools are regulated by the states and the universities are regulated by the government. The government is now agreeing to some kind of risk adjustment in principle so that the regulatory forces focus on the state-controlled vocational schools where most of the problems are arising.
Q. What are the other higher-education issues that the new government should focus on?
A. Funding must be improved and made more sustainable. The federal government made a number of very welcome funding commitments in its response to the Bradley and Cutler reviews [which examined ways to improve Australian higher education]. We are hopeful that the government will deliver fully on these commitments through to 2013 and then lift Australia’s investment in higher education from 0.6 percent of GDP to at least 1 percent, the OECD average, by 2020. An important component of this is improved funding for infrastructure.
Q. The prime minister recently decided to put oversight of undergraduate education under a new position, a minister for tertiary education, jobs, skills, and workplace relations. Why did you object to this?
A. It was not merely that we were worried about the naming of the ministries, which seemed to link education to skills and jobs rather than to the broader and more fundamental goals of higher education. We were also concerned about a lack of clarity regarding ministerial responsibility for graduate students. I would have preferred to see a single point of responsibility for universities rather than these divided responsibilities. The result is that the only person with a complete overview is the prime minister, who will never have the time to focus in depth on the sector.
