international education campusreview . com . au
Is our internationalisation strategy lopsided … with a concentration in only a few selected markets ?
National concern
Rethinking transnational education after COVID-19 .
By Fion Lim
In October 2019 , my colleague and I wrote a commentary in
The Australian about the need for Australian universities to prepare and safeguard offshore students who are affected by political unrest . The subsequent outbreak of COVID-19 further exposes that many Australian universities could be over-reliant on specific markets for their international market and probably transnational education .
Campuses went into shutdown around March / April , and we are now past the half-year mark of remote learning . In July 2020 , we learnt from the Department of Home Affairs that the number of student visa lodgements offshore are down by 33.3 per cent compared to the same time last year .
When students cannot come onshore , universities , especially those that rely heavily on this source of income , need to look elsewhere to fill the ‘ financial hole ’. Already there is much anticipation for universities in Australia to expand their cross-border program where students remain in their home countries while gaining an Australian qualification – what has been widely known as transnational education .
To assume that everything will be back to normal after the outbreak is over would be a dangerous position to take . With the increasing hostility reported by some western countries on international students of a particular nationality , it won ’ t be surprising to foresee major transnational markets such as China reconsider who it wants to partner with when the current chaos from COVID-19 comes to an end .
COVID-19 has changed the dynamics of international markets in many ways . The recent data on incoming international students published in March 2020 by Department of Education Skills and Employment using the UNESCO Institute of Statistics have seen USA , Australia , Canada , China and UK as the top 5 countries in terms of numbers in 2017 .
Interesting statistics if one considers that China has learned the mechanism to open up its education for international students after the Post-war era or that UK has slipped from its position as one of the top three . At the same time , we can see that other traditional markets such as Malaysia and Vietnam are starting to face a worsening economic downturn that could affect the conventional middle-income families – those who have been attracted to Australian transnational education .
While the outburst of COVID-19 has been unexpected , the reality now is to do damage control while seeking to protect the interests of those affected as well as universities ( be it financially and in terms of academic exchange we enjoyed so far ).
But universities should pause for a second and take some time out to re-examine their internationalisation strategy . Have we succeeded in our claims on using transnational education as a motor to improve the capacity building of host countries ? Are our models on transnational education sustainable in the long run ? Or more bluntly , is our internationalisation strategy lopsided with an emphasis on numbers , particularly at the undergraduate level and with a concentration in only a few selected markets ?
The unsustainable fly-in-fly-out mode for delivery , the interesting political developments of the traditional hosting countries of TNE , and perceived tension between countries point to one fact – the current ways of Australian transnational education are probably not sustainable .
However , to advocate a change , we need a paradigm shift in terms of how we value the relationships and the academic contribution to capacity building with host countries and the transnational models we adopt . But most importantly , this is the time to think carefully about the value of transnational education .
The last thing one would want to see is an erosion of quality . A possible trend when one considers the increasing acceptance of lower-level Year 11 of Victoria Curriculum Education ( VCE ) instead of Year 12 as entry requirements for university degrees . The widening of entry is feasible for onshore Australian students due to their familiarity with the higher education teaching pedagogies . Many Asian students , however , continue to struggle with western pedagogies and their English competency . Before COVID-19 , many students from these countries were already struggling to cope with learning in English .
History tells us short-term , quick-fix solutions can only lead to long-term disasters . In our quest for survival in the transnational education market , any attempts to prioritise student numbers to fill financial gaps by unnecessarily relaxing entry requirements into degree courses , over academic quality , will be a foolish move . ■
Fion Lim works at Victoria University in the area of quality assurance of third-party arrangements .
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