The Australian’s higher education shill, Tim Dodd, has penned an article bemoaning that Australia faces a third year without a large scale return international students, labelling it “unthinkable” and a “crisis”.
According to Dodd:
- Every month without the large scale return of international students puts at risk Australia’s $40 billion export industry, badly impacting not just universities but also businesses relying on the spending of 700,000 international students.
- Many universities “have partner education institutions overseas that teach students for one to two years before they come to Australia to complete their degrees”. These arrangements are now at risk.
- Governments must expand quarantine arrangements to bring in more students, as well as push for early vaccine passports to allow thousands of students to safely enter.
The notion that international education is a $40 billion export industry has been comprehensively debunked on this site, most recently here.
In a nutshell, most international students fund a significant proportion of their expenses via income earned while working in Australia. By definition, this is not an export.
The fact that so many international students fell into hardship when they lost their jobs at the beginning of the pandemic, and then demanded taxpayer support, highlights this point. As does the fact that youth unemployment has cratered despite rising participation, precisely because the number of international students working and competing for jobs has shrunk.
As usual, Tim Dodd has failed to mention the positives from having fewer international students.
In addition to the afore mentioned benefit of having less students competing for jobs, lower student numbers can only raise pedagogical standards and improve the educational experience for our own children, who will no longer be tasked with doing the heavy lifting on group assignments so that international students pass.
The mindless rush to gain international students has utterly corrupted our universities. COVID border closures will help to unscramble this egg.
In any event, if Australia genuinely wants to boost export returns from international students, universities should scale-up their online course offerings using learning systems such as Moodle to offer Australian education to students in their own country. Universities should also establish campuses overseas.
They won’t do this of course, since Australian education is not what motivates international students to enroll in our universities. It’s the lure of access to our job market, permanent residency, and access to our property market. Our universities are nothing more than immigration conduits.
Universities know they are selling a pathway to permanent residency, citizenship and, in due course, family reunion migration. “Study” is merely the inconvenient box that needs to be ticked.
