Can Australia get smart in India?

Education, now one of Australia's largest industries, would seem to be our best hope of developing a truly substantial non-commodity export sector. Trade in education services now earns Australia $5 billion annually, more than wool and close to wheat. In addition, Australia is the third-largest supplier of education services to the Indian market, and India is the second-largest market for Australian education. Over 13,000 Indians trained and received education in Australia last year - a 32 per cent increase on 2002. For post-graduate studies, students from India are the biggest group among foreign students in Australia.

India's growing middle-class, already well over 100 million people, means the potential for growth in education trade should be enormous. Yet, Australia cannot afford to be complacent in education, which in recent years has become a huge, fiercely competitive international business and also fiercely competitive. According to a recent issue of the Economist magazine, “since the late 1990s, the global higher-education market has been growing by 7 per cent a year. Annual fee income alone is now an estimated $30 billion”.

Despite the potential for our education sector in India, and the certainty of increased competition for the business, our national policy seems to consist of little more than the usual bilateral agreements professing co-operation, low-level promotional campaigns and the occasional fine-sounding speech.

While Wayne Swan, and his federal colleagues, are working on ways to convince Australian electors that they are worthy bearers of the Hawke - Keating legacy they could do a lot worse than develop big vision policies for our education export industries, particularly in relation to the burgeoning Indian market.