campusreview.com.au
international education
Student service delivery:
Australia’s Achilles heel?
Focusing on student
services will help
Australian universities to
retain their place as an
attractive study option for
international students.
By Phil Honeywood
F
or a variety of reasons Australia has become a desirable study
destination for an increasingly diverse cohort of international
students. However, as we continue to experience year-on-
year inbound student enrolment growth of 10 per cent and higher,
serious questions need to be asked about the quality of our student
service delivery. Course-related employability opportunities, public
transport concessions and better integration of domestic and
overseas students must all remain key priority areas. Into this mix
needs to be added a much greater emphasis on the provision of
safe, affordable and purpose-built student accommodation.
Under the headline ‘Foreign student numbers surge’, the June
edition of Campus Review highlighted a 15 per cent increase in
international inbound student numbers for the first quarter of 2017.
Quite apart from this incredible growth in overall numbers, what
was particularly pleasing for international education stakeholders
was a clear trend of greater diversity in student source countries.
Growth of over 20 per cent year-on-year in Brazilian, Colombian,
Taiwanese and Malaysian students goes a long way to decreasing
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our heavy reliance on the Chinese and Indian markets. More
importantly, enhanced cultural diversity in our nation’s classrooms
and lecture theatres can serve to boost the global citizenship
attributes of all students.
ENROLMENT GROWTH RATIONALE
It is tempting to suggest that our education institutions’ relatively
high global rankings, combined with attributes such as a wonderful,
relaxed lifestyle, are currently the key drivers behind the decision
of students to study in Australia. However, there are dangers in
relying on such self-congratulatory perspectives. It is, for example,
becoming increasingly apparent that we are the beneficiary of
other study destination countries putting in place perceived and
very real barriers to entry for student visas.
Theresa May, both as home secretary and now in her current
incarnation as British prime minister, has done a great deal to deny
overseas students entry into the UK’s universities. Her conservative
government’s insistence on counting international students in their
country’s official migration statistics has had a very real impact
on the UK’s global market share. The fact that certain traditional
student source countries appear to have been deliberately targeted
for reductions in student visa entry has also created potentially
long-lasting perception difficulties. This recently became apparent
when May led a trade delegation to India. The country’s prime
minister, Narendra Modi, publicly reproached his UK counterpart for
allegedly making it more difficult for Indian students to gain entry
for study purposes compared with other nationalities.
In equal measure, just when the US appeared to be capitalising
on its potential as a major drawcard for international students, the