Australian Universities Fear a Dangerous Dependence on foreign students

[RoslynB-L at comcast.net]

Hi Hal, 

Hope you've been well.  I've tried a couple of times to get my address changed for this list to:
roislindubh at gmail.com, but nothing seems to happen.  Could you please either send me the instructions or let me know what to do?  Thanks - Roslyn 

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: "Harold F. Schiffman" <haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu> 

> http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i48/48a01501.htm 
> >From the issue dated August 8, 2008 
> 
> 
> Australian Universities Fear a Dangerous Dependence 
> As the foreign-student market slows, higher-education officials grow 
> concerned about revenue and quality 
> 
> By LUKE SLATTERY 
> 
> Sydney, Australia 
> 
> Australia has been stunningly successful in its ability to recruit foreign 
> students. An estimated 250,000 of them study at Australia's 39 
> universities and their offshore programs. That's an estimated 6 percent of 
> the world market. 
> 
> But even as Australia has gained admiration overseas for its recruiting 
> successes, university administrators and professors here have become 
> increasingly worried that their higher-education system has developed a 
> dangerous dependence on foreign students. 
> 
> About 25 percent of the public system's budget comes from foreign-student 
> tuition. That revenue proved to be a blessing for much of the 1990s and 
> the early 2000s as federal support declined. 
> 
> But enrollment numbers have dropped from their double-digit increases. 
> Growth during the 2006-7 academic year was 6.6 percent. As a result, 
> several universities have found themselves in a financial crunch. 
> 
> One of the first warning signs appeared in 2004, when the Royal Melbourne 
> Institute of Technology had to take out a loan to meet a shortfall of 
> $25-million (U.S.). Among other troubles, it had overestimated the number 
> of foreign students who would enroll. 
> 
> Last year a $5-million hole appeared in the University of Melbourne's 
> arts-department budget, partly for the same reason. 
> 
> At Central Queensland University, where nearly half of the 25,000 students 
> are from overseas, falling international enrollments forced administrators 
> to dismiss 200 faculty and staff members last June. 
> 
> John Hay, who retired this year after 12 years as vice chancellor of the 
> University of Queensland, says many of the less competitive universities 
> have reduced their entrance standards in order to raise overseas 
> enrollments, appointed part-time staff to teach those students, and made 
> do with inadequate infrastructure. 
> 
> "In short," he says, "they are being taught in an often inappropriate 
> context for higher education, in numbers that are too large. It sends a 
> bad message." 
> 
> John Rickard, vice chancellor of Central Queensland, rejects any 
> suggestion that academic standards are lower on his campuses in Sydney, 
> Melbourne, Brisbane, and the Gold Coast, which serve primarily 
> international students. 
> 
> In an e-mail message, he said the library facilities, for example, were 
> "among the top 25 percent for quality, customer satisfaction, services, 
> facilities, and staff" in a 2007 survey. 
> 
> "We consider ourselves an educator with high standards," he said, "and 
> hold a core belief that there should be no obstacleseconomic, pedagogic, 
> administrative, or politicalto students accessing to higher education." 
> 
> A Once-Rosy Picture 
> 
> Between 1996 and 2006, the number of international students enrolled in 
> Australian universities climbed 371 percent. (By comparison, the number of 
> Australian students rose 26 percent.) Today education is the country's 
> third-biggest export, raking in $11.7-billion last year. 
> 
> But Australian universities are hardly flush with cash. During roughly the 
> same period that foreign enrollments grew, federal support for higher 
> education fell sharply. In 2006 it made up 41 percent of the 
> public-university system's budget, down from 57 percent in 1996. 
> 
> The government's strategy was simple: Require universities to depend more 
> on tuition for income and less on government support. The widespread 
> importing of foreign students was in large part the product of dire 
> financial need. 
> 
> Frank Larkins, the deputy vice chancellor responsible for international 
> students at the University of Melbourne, says some highly regarded 
> research institutions now use international-student revenue to subsidize 
> other operations. Melbourne, he says, depends on the $250-million it earns 
> each year from foreign students, who make up 27 percent of the student 
> body, to pay for new facilities and for research scholarships and 
> professorial appointments. 
> 
> "Whereas in the early 90s it was a bit of a luxury to have some 
> international funds that were a bit discretionary, that's no longer the 
> case," he says. "It's now a core part of the budget of every Australian 
> university. Without it we might not be able to hire world-class staff in a 
> global market. It's a big business." 
> 
> Simon Marginson, a professor of higher education at Melbourne, says this 
> financial dependence distorts a university's mission and threatens 
> academic quality. High enrollments, he says, can be maintained only by 
> admitting some students of questionable quality and then pushing them 
> through to graduation: "The Australian system is in danger of just 
> rubber-stamping degrees." 
> 
> A study released last year has been used to back up that claim. Bob 
> Birrell, director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research at 
> Monash University, found that one-third of foreign students who obtained 
> permanent residence visas after graduation in the 2005-6 academic year 
> could not demonstrate that they were competent in English on standard 
> Immigration Department tests. 
> 
> Whether or not academic standards are declining at Australia's 
> universities, one thing is clear: The federal government spends less on 
> higher education than most other developed nations do. 
> 
> A report released last fall by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation 
> and Development, a group of industrialized countries that share economic 
> data, said Australia spent 4.3 percent of its gross domestic product on 
> all levels of public education, compared with an average of 5 percent 
> among similar democratic nations. Australia was the only one of the 
> group's 30 member nations to reduce public spending on higher education. 
> 
> Stephan Vincent Lancrin, an international education analyst with the OECD, 
> says he is concerned that Australia has adopted a mercantile approach to 
> international education. 
> 
> "What struck me the last time I visited Australia is how the academic 
> mentality has changed and how the academic sector views itself as an 
> industry," he recalls. "This is something that is still very odd in most 
> other OECD countries, including the United States. And it's something that 
> would probably have been unthinkable 15 years ago." 
> 
> 'A Worrying Perception' 
> 
> Many academics demand that the Labor government of Kevin Rudd, who was 
> sworn in as prime minister in December, correct the financial imbalance by 
> putting more money into higher education. Mr. Rudd promised more funds as 
> part of an "education revolution" when he was elected, in November, and in 
> May his government announced that it would nearly double the 
> higher-education infrastructure endowment, to about $10.5-billion. 
> 
> "This is a first step in indicating that the government is serious about 
> including higher education in its education revolution," said Glenn 
> Withers, chief executive of the top higher-education association, 
> Universities Australia, in a written statement. But he urged the 
> government to meet the immediate need for more financing for each student 
> to maintain the quality of teaching. 
> 
> Eight of the country's major research universities recently submitted a 
> report to the federal government warning that Australia's image is taking 
> a beating in India, and that the government should increase scholarships 
> for graduate students and researchers from that country. 
> 
> "A worrying perception of Australian education in India is as a provider 
> of cheap rather than high-quality courses," wrote the group, which 
> includes Australian National University, the country's top research 
> institution in the international rankings compiled by Shanghai Jiao Tong 
> University. "This perception is compounded by the large number of Indian 
> students who clearly chose Australia as a study destination in order to 
> gain permanent residency. Three-quarters of Indian students who complete 
> university courses in Australia apply and receive permanent residency 
> visas." 
> 
> Australian universities are also taking measures to make sure they are not 
> overly dependent on any one particular foreign market. 
> 
> While most foreign students here come from Asian countries such as China, 
> Indonesia, and Malaysia, university recruiters are branching out into 
> other parts of the world. Institutions have also been more aggressive in 
> tapping into some of those traditional Asian markets. 
> 
> For many universities here, the challenge has become twofold. They want to 
> reduce their financial dependence of foreign students, for sure. But they 
> also want to attract better students in order to keep their economy 
> competitive. 
> 
> "We are not attracting the best and brightest," says Mr. Marginson, the 
> Melbourne professor. "Nor is that the image we seek to project. In the 
> global knowledge economy, talent is highly mobile, and other nations now 
> place a growing emphasis on policies designed to attract and hold foreign 
> researchers." 
> 
> Despite his concerns, Mr. Lancrin, of the OECD, thinks Australian 
> universities will come out of this period of tumult intact, in part 
> because of their past successes. 
> 
> Australia, he says, realizes the importance of diversifying its foreign 
> student body. And while "it has sometimes been too optimistic about the 
> demand," he adds, "it is really one of the countries with the most 
> experience and the most advanced on that learning curve." 
> 
> http://chronicle.com 
> Section: International 
> Volume 54, Issue 48, Page A15 
> 
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