Introduction - Why discuss this topic?

In my first ever job in Australia I worked as a casual lecturer for a private education institute in the Melbourne Central Business District (CBD). Most of the students were from India and China. That was during term 4, in September/October 2008. Naïve as I was, I thought these students were there to learn about printing, pre-press and multimedia. The conditions and the learning material provided were next to non-existent. I had to come up with all the teaching material by myself, which made me stay up weeknights until 2 am and work on weekends to keep up with the class schedule.

I was frustrated with the institute and how students and employees were treated, so I went to the manager and told him about my concerns. He replied quite honestly that it’s all about money, which confirmed what his recruiter, who was responsible for recruiting Indian students, had already told me.

I talked to the students about the situation, but they seemed to be fine with it. All they wanted was a Certificate IV in printing, which was the requirements for Permanent Residency (PR). The institute guaranteed a successful graduation and only one of the students seemed to be keen to work in this profession in Australia.

Later that year, Government and the Department of Immigration and Internal Affairs (DIMIA) became aware of the exploitation of mainly Indian and Chinese students. The institute I worked for was amongst the first to be shut down, later that year, but the situation for students only got worse as they were left in limbo. Finally other private education institutes that were not affected by the closures took them in.

Certainly, things have changed since then. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship has come up with an additional set of regulations, many privately run education institutes, also nicknamed visa factories (also see the Baird Review into the ESOS Act 2000), have been shut down and it is much harder for foreign students to study in Australia.

Since January 2009 I work at Careers & Employment, a unit of the department of student services at Swinburne University. We run our own job-database and have direct dealings with other student services like housing and finance. Digging myself in, trying to overlook the complexity of the entire issue about the welfare of international students in Australia, I realized that there is more to it than meets the eye. I think it’s important to make transparent how many faces the problem actually has. Be it jobs, accommodation, education, or immigration – international students are still disadvantaged, left alone or treated badly.