K.C. BOEY: Remember the international goodwill education engenders

2009/08/30

LISTENING to policy specialist Michael Wesley, university administrator Margaret Gardner and others caught up in the debate over the international education industry in Australia, the frenzy whipped up by students from India about racism against them might not be all that it's cracked up to be.

While Gardner, vice-chancellor of RMIT University in Melbourne, is in broad agreement with Wesley on the root causes of the problems putting at risk Australia's third-largest export earner, she and others point as a factor to a regulatory shift going back eight years that elevates the impetus for skilled migrants to come to Australia.

Which changes the complexion of the debate about an industry that earns Australia more than A$15 billion (RM44 billion) a year, third in value only after coal and iron ore.

Wesley, in a study of international education, raises the spectre of the increasing "marketisation" of higher education, pressing for an image makeover with implications that go beyond education.

The spotlight Gardner throws on immigration flies in the face of positive views of Australia's past in its contribution to developing nations - Malaysia foremost among them - that Wesley acknowledges of the Colombo Plan of the 1950s.

Gardner's assertion takes the debate about questions of the morality of brain drain from source countries, and the distinction that needs to be made in defining "student".

Michael Wesley is alarmed by the impact of the bad press on Australia’s international reputation

In many ways, the students Wesley refers to are unrecognisable from those whom Gardner talks about.

Which would explain the bemusement of any Malaysian caught up in the debate sparked by the bad press Australia's international education industry has attracted over the past three months, particularly in India.

This came after a spate of violence in Melbourne and Sydney against students from India, leading to allegations of racism.

Racism? Malaysians - from Malaysian Students Department Australia director Dr Mohamed Nasir Abu Hassan to student leaders in Melbourne - have no such concerns (tinyurl.com/kobjyx).

Still, the implications for Australia's international reputation - beyond education - alarmed Wesley, director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney.

He wrote a policy brief (tinyurl.com/ms5zdl) setting out the problem and the costs to Australia, recommending measures to restore the reputation of an institution founded on the Colombo Plan.

Lowy took his policy brief to Melbourne, having its launch co-hosted by Asialink, a centre of the University of Melbourne.

Gardner was one of two respondents to Lowy's policy paper. The other was Simon Overland, chief commissioner of Victoria Police, for his perspective on community and student safety.

Wesley warned of "serious negative consequences" for Australia.

"As the recent attacks on Indian students demonstrate, media attention to such incidents can inform broader perceptions overseas about Australian society," said the highly regarded foreign policy specialist, former director of the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University and co-chair of the working group on Australia's place in the world at Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's 2020 (community) Summit last year.

Margaret Gardner feels granting students easy permanent residencies is problematic

"Australia can't afford to forget that the end of the White Australia Policy occurred just over a generation ago -- and that people in several Asian countries believe that racial prejudice is still prevalent in Australian society."

Wesley traces the roots of the problems to the "steady marketisation" of higher education in Australia since the mid-1980s, in the deregulation of the tertiary education sector including the reintroduction of university fees for Australian students, and the charging of full fees for international students.

"The growth of perceptions overseas that Australian education seeks to maximise profits and minimise costs, paying declining attention to quality control, threatens to damage its brand name and eventually its dynamism as an export industry," says Wesley.

He warns of the risk of a "poisoned alumni" of international students returning to source countries spreading negative perceptions of Australia as a destination of choice for students who did not make the grade for Europe or North America.

Gardner agrees to a point. But it would be a stretch, in her view, to liken alumni from her university and tertiary institutions like hers to those given student visas to study cooking, hairdressing and hospitality in "hole in the wall" colleges, as is the case for many of those students from India alleging mistreatment in Australia.

As one former student now back in India remarked in an online forum, "this is nothing but an immigration scam".

The former student was responding to a discussion in On Line Opinion (tinyurl.com/nabtdl) that would make for hilarious reading in parts if the issue was not so serious.

The forum was triggered by an education and public advocacy consultant who is as critical as Gardner of the policy change in 2001 of the previous government under John Howard, to allow overseas students to apply for permanent residency as skilled migrants.

Wesley, Gardner and Overland paint a litany of maladies resulting from structural weaknesses giving rise to an explosion of poorly regulated private providers of vocational education and training (VET).

Between 2007 and last year, enrolments to the VET sector rose 41.3 per cent among the more than half a million international students in Australia. Enrolments to English language intensive courses for overseas students (ELICOS) rose 23.9 per cent.

Wesley and Overland identified conditions giving rise to the vulnerability for which students from India are particularly prone, little of which has to do with race.

Beyond problems of law and order for Australians and international students, and their implications for perceptions of Australia overseas, educators and policymakers could reflect on the spirit of the Colombo Plan and the goodwill it has engendered in countries such as Malaysia.

New Straits Times reserves the right not to publish offensive or abusive comments and those of hate speech, harassment, commercial promos and invasion of privacy. Your IP will be logged and may be used to prevent further submission. The views expressed here are that of the members of the public and unless specifically stated are not those of NST.