international education
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“I don’t think we need to compete on career services,” he said.
In implementing all of these ideas, Voninski urged the audience
not to forget about what students themselves want. For one, they
don’t want to be passive. The University of Sydney’s Panda Warriors,
for example, just achieved a vast proportion of student council votes.
Their international student-focused platform? Value for money,
equitable treatment, and sufficient study and wellbeing support.
If Australian universities really want to be proactive about
attracting the best global talent, however, Voninski suggested
they use a proportion of international students’ fees to establish
scholarships for students from underrepresented countries. Top
US universities already do this.
Aleksandr Voninski
BUBBLE MENTALITY
The day concluded with a panel discussion, where Voninski and
international student Linus Faustin were joined by Mark Lucas,
chief corporate and business officer at iae GLOBAL Network,
a global international student recruitment company, and
Craig Cowdrey, managing director and co-founder of Sonder
Australia – a crisis support and wellbeing service aimed partly at
international students.
Lucas began by countering Alex Frino‘s forecast of exponential
international student growth. “Universities have this kind of bubble
mentality, that ‘this year was a good year, so that’s fantastic’, but it’s
about the pipeline,” he said.
He noted that Canada’s international student numbers are
“growing very quickly”, thanks to favourable visa working conditions
for both undergraduates and postgraduates.
“They’re growing at a rate of 17 per cent a year. And they’re tipped
to pass us if that continues.”
As are China’s numbers. The country is now the top global net
importer of international students. “If you want to know where
your Korean students are, they’re all in China,” he said.
Yet he also critiqued Australia for not doing enough to maintain
its reputation. “[International students are] being put into classrooms
that are not diverse. They might as well stay in Shanghai.”
Cost, too, is a factor that could work against Australia, with
our language schools charging around 50 per cent more than
Canada’s, which in turn are dearer than America’s.
Cowdrey, a former diplomat in Asia, raised a third area in which
Australia underperforms: student care.
“With this huge increase in student numbers … there’s not been
a correlated increase in resources towards student safety, welfare
and support,” he said.
He explained that it’s not that there are so many critical incidents,
but when they occur, perceptions could be better-managed.
“Isolated incidents [like the baseball bat attack at ANU] … spread
like wildfire though social media and get to the other side of the
world overnight,” he said.
“Chinese young people are listening less and less to the
government … but what they do listen to ... is their peers, the
people who talk to them within their social circles, within their
social media groups and their WeChat groups.
“[The] disconnect between perception and reality … could be so
damaging in terms of brand management for us as a country.”
To remedy this, Cowdrey suggested a ‘consistent framework’ that
survives political cycles, budgets and university leadership changes.
Faustin added that health education – an element of international
student wellbeing – is especially overlooked. He gave an example:
“[Many] Chinese students who come here are realising who they
are, and coming out as LGBT, so I think more resources need to be
put towards that.
“There’s a real reluctance in general, in regards to safety or
harassment issues, to report these things to an existing structure:
whether that be the police, because they’re afraid of the police in
their own country, or they’re [afraid that] they will get in trouble
because victim-blaming is common in their culture, or the
university, because they’re worried they’re going to be un-enrolled,”
Cowdrey added.
CROSS-CULTURAL EXCHANGE
Campus Review asked the panellists how to facilitate greater
domestic-international student interaction, as mentioned by
speaker Ruby Biscuit.
Faustin gave an example of an activity that he participated
in: a language exchange program at UTS, where domestic
and international students meet up to converse in each other’s
languages. However, he noted that some international students
simply won’t be interested in these kind of initiatives.
“There’s cultural issues around the fact that ‘your parents are
paying money, you’re there to study’,” he said.
Lucas said this doesn’t have to be the case: “It’s important
for international students to get the message that part of the
experience is being engaged in sports or social activities … That’s
where you build your networks into the future. And that’s why
the [New] Colombo plan works so well. Half the government of
Malaysia and Singapore studied in Australia.”
Voninski offered another integration method that solves another
university issue: universities’ employment of international students,
which is common in the US.
Segueing into ‘bigger picture’ mode, Voninski said the Australian
government’s short-term priority should be to ensure international
students don’t get caught up in the immigration debate.
On this note, Cowdrey added that one way to do this is to
balance negative media stories about international students with
positive ones, “not just economically, which is a bit dry and not
easy to connect to on an emotional level, but at a cultural level”.
Faustin added that universities need to understand the
importance of this, and to use student bodies and community
groups to talk to political parties, labour unions and other
community organisations, “because it has to come from
the community”. ■
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