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International University students are effectively subsidising their Australian peers, a recent report reveals.
The report from the NSW Auditor-General Peter Achterstraat says international students are major source of revenue for Australian Universities contributing $15.3 billion in 2011-12.
Achterstraat said: “Fees received per overseas student were on average close to three times those received from a domestic student.” He said Sydney University charged international students an average of 274% of what the locals pay. This was the greatest disparate in NSW Universities, though the University of NSW was close behind. The benefits haven’t just been for Australian students. Achterstraat said: “the money these [international] students spend on goods and services” significantly contributes to the Australian economy.
A report earlier in the year from Dr Michael Chaney placed education as Australia’s fourth largest export industry. This reliance on the international market has been questioned over the years, especially following the drop in enrollments after they peaked in 2009. According to the Bureau of Statistics in 2009 over one-fifth of University students were international, which was far more than any other OECD countries.
In 2011 Vice Chancellor of Melbourne University Glyn Davis told a conference: “On the one hand, the government wants a huge domestic expansion, but it is meant to be underpinned by the continuing success of the international market. If that fails, so will this. This is what props up the entire university system.” He questioned the sustainability of the system with falling enrolments from overseas.
Universities will be even more dependent on their international students if the remaining state governments agree to the federal government’s Gonski education reforms. Universities would lose funds to primary and secondary schools under the proposed funding model. But the report chaired by Dr Michael Chaney for the International Education Advisory Council offers good news.
The Chaney report predicts a 30 percent increase in enrollments from 2013 to 2020. So in 2020 international students will contribute over 20 billion dollars to the Australian economy.
University magnet
But why are so many international students drawn by a magnet to Australian universities?
One reason is our proximity to Asia. This year Chinese students make up an enormous 40% of international enrollments, which far exceeds Malaysia in second place on 7.2%.
Quid spoke to Professor Kerry Brown from Sydney University’s China Studies Centre about why Chinese students were opting for Australian universities. He said: “Some Chinese students and their parents complain that [with] Chinese universities its much more rote learning, class sizes are huge . . . you’ve got very little space for students to really kind of express themselves.”
“So broadly [there are] issues about . . . the ways in which students can develop themselves and their sort of creativity. In a fairly hierarchical, Confucian-sort of system that you have currently in China.”
He also noted that while Chinese universities were improving, very few compared to Australia are considered in the top 500 universities in the world. So since the reform and opening up that began in 1978 there’s been a “wave” of Chinese students going abroad. “They come for an experience, . . . they come to be internationalised,” he said.
Though he noted with a laugh that students have complained that you come all the way to Australia or the UK and in some of the sciences, economics and business classes most of the students are Chinese. At the Sydney University Business School 90% of graduates are Chinese.
Quid spoke with first year economics student Heguan Hao about why he came to an Australian university. Heguan said: “If I go back to China [for a job] they ask: ‘What is your university? Sydney University? Oh okay, come [and work for us].”
“Chinese business parents want their children go abroad to Australia . . . They hope their children can develop their business to the world.”
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