campusreview. com. au
INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION
It has big implications for international education in Australia, which is a bittersweet thing to contemplate.
Is there a silver lining for Australia in this regard, with some speculation that international students will be turned off the US and the UK because of Brexit and Trump? Yes, there are two surveys that have been done recently of international students considering the US, asking them whether they’ d be more likely, or less, to study in the states if either candidate was elected. One of them – a survey of about 1000 students – shows 65 per cent would be less likely to study in the US if Trump got elected. I don’ t think anybody expects that 65 per cent of students aren’ t going to go to the US, but what that shows is the majority of students considering the US will be less excited about the States and a bit wary. That will translate into lower numbers or less student interest, let’ s say. So those students will be looking for other places to go. The obvious candidates for the moment are Canada, Australia and New Zealand, being the largest Englishlanguage destinations. Given that the UK has put the‘ we’ re full’ sign up recently, they’ re not particularly inviting for larger numbers of international students at the moment.
What does Australia need to do, in that context, to keep the welcome mat out for international students? Australia’ s susceptible to the same sort of xenophobic policies and anti-immigration policies that we’ re seeing triumph in the US and the UK recently. In large part, that’ s a result of a backlash against economic inequality; people are laying the blame for inequality at the feet of globalisation and foreigners. They’ re the easy targets. The right in the US and the UK have capitalised on that, as we have seen in the past.
So one implication for Australia is that economic inequality and how to deal with that will be at the front of the minds of every political party now, which is good. It’ s good that is being taken seriously. In the international education sector, we’ ve been conscious for a long time that the ability of Australia to host large numbers of young people from around the world, which we do well, is dependent on widespread community support for that project. At the moment, there is widespread community support for having lots of young people from all over the world in Australia but that’ s fragile. So we need to make sure that the highereducation sector is both tackling economic inequality broadly and making contributions to redress those inequalities. The rest of the education system here [ for example, in secondary education ] is probably where the challenges are. It’ s unfortunate that we haven’ t made more progress there with the Gonski review and so on. That’ s a challenge for the education system. For international education as a sector, we need to make sure the benefits of internationalisation are felt widely across the community. In the IEAA, we’ ve commissioned some research looking at community impact of international education and how to engage with different sectors of the community, both to have them understand the broad benefits we experience from that large flow of young people around the world and to make sure the international activities of education providers are benefiting a wide range of students.
What we’ ve seen in the last decade is a real effort, in universities and in schools, to provide way more outbound opportunities for students, and opportunities to learn about the world, to learn languages, to engage online with students from around the world, to travel for short periods of time and so on. In Australia, it’ s been successful. Our rate of outbound mobility has grown quickly. Now we’ re higher in North America and most of Europe. I hope that broad experience of international education creates a much broader-based support for that internationalisation effort in Australia, so something like this is less likely to happen in Australia as we evolve.
A recent survey from IDP Education showed that many international students come to Australia over the US and UK because they perceive it to be safer. What should we do to maintain the sense of safety we have in Australia for international students? We should think about it in terms of the communities in which the students live. Where we’ ve seen international students becoming vulnerable in the past is when they’ ve been living in places that seem far from other students and other services. They’ ve relied on public transport late at night and they’ ve been working in precarious employment.
Over the last few years, there’ s been massive investment in Australia in student accommodation, both by the private sector, but also by many education providers. So we’ re seeing, particularly in the CBDs of the capital cities, huge growth in student accommodation and apartments, many of which will be occupied by international students and their families. The communities in which students are living, where there are lots of other students and they’ re close to campuses and close to services and close to part-time work, they’ re quite safe environments in Australia. That’ s one way we can address that.
Also, we’ ve made big progress since the assaults on Indian students a few years back. The police forces in Australia became much more aware of the number of international students and where they’ re living and what ways they might be vulnerable. There’ s much better contact now between the police and other security services and the international student communities and the education providers, so that when something does happen, the response is much better now.
We have become better at managing those situations when they do arise. Overall, Australia is still a very happily diverse and multicultural society. In many ways, we’ re benefiting from decades of successful multiculturalism and integration.
Apart from us being more attractive to students now, you also have to think about academics, researchers, school teachers and professional staff, many of whom in the states are going to be severely demoralised by what’ s just happened. Just as there are many groups that work in international education and the education section more broadly looking to get out of the UK at the moment, there are going to be many people in the US looking to leave. I heard that the Canadian Immigration Department website crashed. We’ re going to see lots of US students looking to study somewhere else in the next few years, as well as international students not going to the US. We’ re going to see more US students looking to go somewhere and Australia will be one of the destinations they might be interested in.
I expect that we’ ll see many more applications from academics, researchers, teachers and professional staff [ from the US and UK ] when vacancies are advertised in Australia. Again, it’ s bittersweet for us. We benefit from having a workforce that’ s internationalised. We’ re welcoming to staff from all over the world, but it’ s terrible to see them motivated to come here by such tragedy. ■
9