It seems Australia’s latest export growth industry – selling university degrees to international students – is under threat as the Chinese realise they are being short-changed. From The Brisbane Times:
The plight of a Chinese student whose parents sold their home to pay for an Australian university education but only found a job handing out product samples has sparked debate in China questioning the value of overseas education.
The worsening job prospects for graduates returning to China could send a chill through Australia’s third largest export market – international education – which is worth $21.8 billion annually, Australian trade officials have told Fairfax Media…
“Lin” was under huge pressure to succeed at Monash University after her parents sold their home for 1.2 million Chinese yuan ($A230,000) to afford the university fees, a Hangzhou newspaper reported…
She changed universities after failing a subject, and spent two million yuan over six years studying finance in Australia before returning this year. Back in China she struggled to find a low-level job paying just 5000 yuan a month.
Amid a wave of stories about disillusioned Chinese students returning from overseas, and social media debate, the official People’s Daily published an editorial saying returnees may be “incompatible to domestic society”. The risk of studying abroad was getting bigger because it did not guarantee a good job, the editorial said.
A survey of 150,000 Chinese overseas students found on average that they make only 500 Chinese yuan ($100) more per month than Chinese university graduates.
One Chinese social media user, commenting on Lin’s story, wrote that his friend had spent 2 million yuan studying in Australia since high school, but the family would have made a better investment buying two apartments because the rentals would exceed his salary…
The NSW Auditor General has identified a financial risk to NSW universities if overseas student intakes fall, because almost a quarter of university revenue comes from international student fees. Monash University, where Lin studied, earned $652 million from overseas student fees last year, up 23 per cent from the previous year.
But in China, failure stories are resonating because there are many more examples out there, says Director of the Australia China Alumni Association in Beijing, Ben Newman.
“It is no longer as ‘gold collar’ as it used to be. Students coming back are facing a lot of problems,” he says…
“The foreign degree isn’t the edge it used to be,” says Australian National University’s China liaison director, Amanda Barry.
“The big employers in China go around job fairs of the top Chinese universities and can fill their graduate intake – they don’t need foreign graduates”…
I can’t say that I am surprised.
Australia’s universities have become dependent financially upon foreign students. And the need to attract, year in and year out, huge numbers of foreign students has impacted on the prestige-value of an Australian qualification in the international market-place.
University standards have also dropped in a bid to keep student numbers (and profits) flowing. There is continuous pressure not to be too demanding on foreign students when it comes to language skills, and if possible, to pass low performing students as they undertake their courses (similar factors are also at play with domestic students).
The above factors are compounded by increasing competition from universities abroad (and within China) as their standards improve. Arguably, it is getting harder to attract the best students from China, who are more likely to study at home (or elsewhere).
On a separate but related issue, one of the reasons why education exports grew so much in the first place was because they are a pathway to Australian residency. Take the incentive of residency away and education exports would likely collapse. Indeed, I’d almost go as far to say that Australia is not primarily selling education but rather residency.
The Australian’s Judith Sloan nicely encapsulated the issue in May with the following comment:
To sell overpriced degrees to overseas students, it is necessary to be able to offer the byproduct of permanent residence for graduates. Any reduction in the immigration numbers would make that sell quite a bit harder. No doubt, there was a bit of wink-and-nod between the government and the vice-chancellors on this topic.
Again, the key reason why education exports boomed in the first place was the carrot of permanent residency, not because Australian universities offer anything special in the way of an education.
