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Foreign students in Australia struggle in a time of crisis

By Peter West - posted Monday, 22 June 2020


A virus from Wuhan in China has changed our daily lives in the space of a few months. China says it has gone to a 'war footing' to deal with a new outbreak of the virus in Beijing. Here is a reality check: it isn't over yet. Will we ever get back to normal? Brazil and the USA suffer worst, their leaders denying reality. US President Donald Trump, having called the virus a hoax and a plot engineered by his opponents, is planning large rallies again with no regard for the social distancing many of us are trying to live by in the time of the virus. "Hope springs eternal in the human breast", said the poet Alexander Pope. But the mayor of Seoul in Korea says that hopes of a return to normal any time soon are a fantasy. Korea has enacted strict controls, clever technology and tough measures which appear to have given Koreans some measure of security. Other countries seem to be trying to blunder and bluster through. Their chances of success seem slight.

Universities in crisis.

Here in Australia, many parts of society are struggling to survive. One of these is the university sector. Our Australian universities are in crisis. This hardly seems an exaggeration. They have grown dependent on foreign students. A pilot scheme has been announced to bring some three hundred-odd students to two Canberra universities for July. But serious re-enrolment of foreign students cannot start until 2021 - at earliest. It seems Australia's borders will substantially be shut for this calendar year, in any case.

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"My God, how the Money Rolls In!" seems to have been the theme of Australian universities in the last ten years or so. At least it was, according to the pundits like Salvatore Babones now writing in the media , wagging their fingers and saying "The chickens have come home to roost". Before the virus hit, foreign students were about a third of all university places, said The Economist. Many students have gone home to their own countries or remain here, struggling to get work, find accommodation and scrounge for food. There have been long lines at soup kitchens in scenes we last saw in the Great Depression.

Meanwhile, universities are crying poor. They are laying off many of the casual staff they employed in rosier times. And they are begging the Federal Government for money. And remember that universities employed people to clean offices, tidy gardens, and of course they had a vast array of clerical and administrative staff. These were mostly officious Pooh-Bahs who drove around in university cars, had meetings about rules, regulations and policies, and told academics how to teach and what to put in their subject outlines.

What were the causes?

Commentators will doubtless spend many hours analysing where we went wrong. Some have pointed to the incremental growth of funding problems. The following is a brutal summary. Universities were established by State Governments. Prime Minister Menzies gave them Federal funding, which allowed for great expansion. Then after 1972 came more changes. The Whitlam Labor Government made university education free. Since then, Labor and Liberal Governments have brought in a HECS debt that students must pay back. Federal funding has been repeatedly cut back, academics say. And universities have looked hard for foreign students and charged them substantial fees. These students, I'm told by student friends, get money from wealthy parents or arrange loans from financial institutions in their own countries. Asian kids work hard, driven by 'Tiger Mothers' in the style described in the book of that name by Amy Chua.

Many successful foreign students stay here to take jobs and work for four years or so. A helpful government website explains how to apply. How can a struggling Aussie kid manage to get productive, satisfying work these days, when foreigners are invited to stay, and already, many jobs have disappeared?

The case of teacher training

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Universities have become enormous institutions of mass production, far beyond the imagination of those of us wide-eyed innocents who entered the Great Hall of Sydney University in 1963, as I did. Universities have hoovered up students who once had separate training (or education, if you like). Teacher education is a prime example. I remember going to many conferences in the seventies, hearing academics arguing for teacher education to be brought into the universities. "Student teachers must rub shoulders with other students", was the crux of the argument. Years later, most students barely meet anyone from other faculties and they don't rub shoulders with any of them much unless in the bus or the cafeteria. Teacher education moved from lowly teachers' colleges to high-status universities. It has not improved. One example: the amount of music education primary students got was cut back year after year. One music lecturer at my then university documented this carefully around the year 2004. The same can be said for most subject areas: a compulsory course in Australian history for primary teacher education students was cancelled permanently while I was on study leave. Teachers are not better educated and teachers complain more than ever that students emerge ignorant, with not enough practical experience. The complaints are mostly accurate.

The same arguments can be made about nursing.

Favourite theories

Meanwhile, all students are filled with the pet theories of the day. Fashions like semiotics, postmodernism and so on come and go. Feminism is one perennial enthusiasm among many academic staff, and there are numerous courses dealing with aspects of it. Few lead to a job, except of course journalism. Some years ago student teachers told me that they were taught about Aborigines in almost every subject. The usual result was that they were afraid to say anything about the topic for fear of being brow-beaten for saying the wrong thing. There are many serious and worthwhile things to explore in these areas, but I wonder whether this 'think like us' approach produces an educated person.

Top quality education

University websites promise a top quality education to all students. As if that were true! When we were students, we were told: "Look at the student on your left and the one on your right: one of you will fail". Today, the F word is anathema. Hardly anyone can be failed. This is still more true when, with coronavirus rules distancing everyone, there are few lectures that really happen, tutorials are done online in unsatisfying ways, and students struggle to get decent internet learning. Any institution can take in large numbers. But if nobody fails, how will we get reliable doctors, nurses, teachers and osteopaths?

What places do they attend?

Until this year, our universities enrolled hundreds of thousands of students. These are of course enrolled at universities like the University of Sydney, the University of Melbourne and others. Many are also enrolled in Vocational and Educational Training. Shonky private colleges have multiplied and taken money away from students and the public, and recently the government has announced it will cancel these debts. It has been a colossal mess for which everyone has blamed everyone else. Still more students are in English language courses or schools.

A government website says foreign students are from these countries, in order of largest number of students: China, India, Brazil, Nepal, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Colombia and Indonesia.

The problem with China

China deserves special mention. China and Australia have recently exchanged some hostile messages. There are some Australians warning about a Chinese threat to our sovereignty and official Chinese sources are warning Chinese people not to study in Australia because of significant increase in racial attacks. If China decided to stop its students from coming here, the effects would be enormous. Government websites say Chinese students were 38% of overseas students in higher education in 2018. This makes Australian universities very vulnerable to any changes in China government policy. Or in public health.

You would be mad to try to predict how this will end. But the massive number of Chinese students that came to Australia pre-virus cannot continue. We can only ponder the possible effects this might have on the rental market, the restaurant trade which Chinese students work in and patronise, and building apartments in Sydney and Melbourne. Chinese students also contribute to large sections of the whole economy. As do other foreign students.

What range of problems do students have?

All students struggle, as I recall from my own days studying here and in Canada. In another country, I had the usual difficulties: finding enough money; getting decent food; getting accommodation; understanding how a foreign country works ; finding suitable entertainment ; dealing with different traffic systems; and so on. A student here from Afghanistan or Colombia must have many more. I hear that some students say they can't always understand the lecturers, perhaps because they are poor speakers or have strange accents that perplex many students.

There are exceptions. In my experience, Brazilians are good survivors, often arriving late to class and asking around "where's the party tonight?", perhaps making friends with the help of their frequently gregarious nature. Many Asians do very well and are found on high achievers' lists. Some Asian students have experienced racist attacks. It's hard to say how serious a problem this is, or how general. And recently, students at the University of New South Wales were bitten by a fox. The students I knew teased other people. Perhaps today's lot might warn foreign students of attacks from foxes well as hungry sharks, savage koalas, kangaroos and drop bears. I suppose the madcap undergrad humour I knew has not changed much.

Conclusion

In all this turmoil, we have to ask what nobody else has asked. Do foreign students throughout their university years just go to lectures, swot for exams, and sleep, with a bit of hack work thrown in? Or do they get a real education? Do they toast their toes at a campfire? Do they have furious arguments about all kinds of things? Do they get drunk and boisterous in the local pubs? We did all of this in our mad student days.

Universities must change to survive. I only hope they will be better when they come out of all this, and that many students can get the freedom and mind-expansion that fellow students and I enjoyed as I attempted to grow up. Fairly unsuccessfully, I might add.

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About the Author

Dr Peter West is a well-known social commentator and an expert on men's and boys' issues. He is the author of Fathers, Sons and Lovers: Men Talk about Their Lives from the 1930s to Today (Finch,1996). He works part-time in the Faculty of Education, Australian Catholic University, Sydney.

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