This month, Margaret Simons has provided us with her opinion and some insightful information about the current situation of the international education sector in Australia.
The Baird review (Baird, 2009) has made a major impact and confirmed what everybody should have been aware of long before: There is something severely wrong with the way international education is institutionalised through the co-operation with immigration authorities:
'In May 2005, under the watch of the former Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone and Minister for Education Brendan Nelson, the number of occupations on the MODL was greatly expanded to include many comparatively low skilled occupations including cooking and hospitality. Already there were opportunitst in the marketplace. Now they boomed. Dodgy colleges sprang up all over the country. Never before had there been so many opportunities to study hairdressing, cooking and hospitality in Australia, and never before had so many young people from overseas wanted to learn to become cooks and waiters here.
The Federal Government had delegated regulation of private vocational colleges to State Government. They failed at the task. Some colleges barely disguised the fact they were facades for immigration ambitions. Most worryingly of all there were reports of scams in which overseas agents worked with colleges, landlords and employers to bring students to Australia and provide them with work, accommodation and notional study, all on the promise of eventual residency - and with the student being exploited at every step.'
All this was only possible, because students were not enlightened about their rights and duties. If they would complain about housing conditions or low wages and long work, they were threatened to be sent back to their home country (Stewart & Sales, 2010).
It is not only the international education system that is flawed. In my opinion the problem lies deeper. Australia has a history of micro management. Things that should be managed on a national scale are managed by state and each state has a different way to do so. The Melbourne public transport system is divided into several sub divisions, some of them indusry, some of them state government run (rails, signals, coaches, everything in seperate hands). Another great example is the Murray Darling water management that is shared by New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Private vocational colleges are managed by state government, while immigration is managed nationally. The problem with micro management is that all parties involved are busy engaging with their own responsibilities, but not seeing the effect their management has on follow-up processes. This is why Immigration did not see the impact the MODL list and it's promise to provide PR had on the international education system. Neither immigration nor the international education system took control of the further development of graduates after PR was granted. As a result hairdressing and cooking stayed on the MODL list until it was replaced by the SOL list in July 2010, although the number of students continuily grew at an average 12% per years since 1990. So what happened with the new graduates granted a Permanent Residence? One opportunity is that they were so badly trained that there was no chance to gain a decent job in their field of study, another was that they would work in a completely different field, as long as they actually found work.
The damage is done and it will be a major effort to further separate the remaining dodgy businesses from the ethical. A first step has been made, detaching immigration from international education. In my opinion there will be no way around further drops in international student numbers. But instead of putting out poorly trained international graduates at factory numbers, a higher quality international education system with smaller numbers of better qualified international students will not only effectively help Australian industry meet there skills demand, but also help students returning to there country of origin, occupying leadership positions, thanks to the education they received in Australia.
This would be an opportunity for Australia to regain her reputation as a first class destination for international education and also to compete against the UK, the USA and up and coming China, which is currently establishing her own international education system (Australian Government, 2006).
Reference
Australian Government, E. I. (2006). The International Education Market in China. Canberra: Australian Education International. Retrieved from
http://aei.gov.au/AEI/PublicationsAndResearch/Publications/IntlEdMkt_China_pdf.pdf
Baird, B. (2010). Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 Review. Retrieved September 15th, 2010, from
http://www.aei.gov.au/AEI/GovernmentActivities/InternationalStudentsTaskforce/ESOS_REview_Final_Report_Feb_2010_pdf.pdf
Stewart, J. (Reporter), & Sales, L. (Presenter). (2010). Overseas students still face exploitation, Lateline [Television series]. Melbourne, Vic: ABC Television. Transcript retrieved September 15th, 2010, from:
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2010/s3010745.htm
