With Australia’s universities facing a sharp drop in Chinese international student enrolments because of the coronavirus, Stephen Parker – a former vice-chancellor at the University of Canberra – says that universities need to reduce their reliance on Chinese students and has urged universities to instead target Indonesia. Parker has also called on universities to lower their fees for international students:
A typical Bachelor of Commerce at a leading sandstone university for an international student had fees alone of $140,000.
Despite such prices the Australian higher education sector was high quality and had something to offer to students from many other countries, not just China.
Indonesia was a classic example, given students there were very sensitive to price.
“Imagine the impact if we were to educate a large proportion of Indonesia’s next ruling elite,” Dr Parker said.
“So on the motto ‘never let a good crisis go to waste’ we should acknowledge we have a great experience to offer and if we want to offer it more widely we need to adjust the entry price.”
A more diverse source of income, based on a lower price, would mean lower margins for universities but that was better than dealing with situations such as the present crisis.
Australia had more than 900,000 international students enrolled across its education industry at the end of 2019 – an increase of more than 400,000 from 2013:
This explosive growth in international student numbers has already destroyed entry and teaching standards, has inundated Australia’s labour market with cheap exploitative labour, and has helped crush-load Australia’s major cities.
The situation would only worsen if Australia’s educational institutions pivoted toward cheaper, lower quality students from Indonesia in a desperate bid to keep the fees flowing in.
Moreover, if tuition fees are lowered, universities would need to swell enrolment numbers beyond their already world-beating level (see next chart) just to keep revenues equal:
In turn, Australia’s already extreme concentration of international students would worsen to obscene levels.
