The fallout from Monday’s Four Corners special on Australia’s international student trade continued yesterday with domestic students at Murdoch University demanding answers and claiming that the value of their degrees has been badly eroded by “underprepared” and poorly performing international students. From WA Today:
Following the program, Murdoch students and other staff said they had experienced their own “dumbing down” of course units to accommodate international students…
Another current student… said she had witnessed firsthand the “academic misconduct” claims made in the 2017 emails, which found some international students were trying to circumvent the language gap by plagiarising their assignments or contracting outside sources for help…
She said she was especially concerned her degree would be “devalued” due to the revelations, and said the university had a case to answer from students.
“How can you trust graduates who have come out of a uni that doesn’t pay attention to English and admission requirements?… Is my degree now worthless? Now, I’m scared I will have an even more difficult time finding a job than others, because of this.”
Murdoch university featured heavily in Four Corners’ expose. The university experienced a 92% increase in international student numbers between 2017 and 2018, which has led to widespread reports of plagiarism, academic misconduct, and students failing their courses.
The Grattan Institute’s Higher Education Program Director, Andrew Norton, agrees that university entry and teaching standards have been badly degraded, and pins much of the blame on the 2012 deregulation of international student visas by the former Labor Government: