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Trouble for Australian universities without international students?

Brian Leiter

This is ominous; an excerpt:

“My sense is that international education in Australia is in deep, deep trouble. That means higher education is in deep trouble and scientific research is in equally deep trouble, because this is heavily financed from international student fees.”

Marginson, a former professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne, said, “There is now a major forking of the way” between the British and Australian higher education systems, because Australia has closed its borders during the pandemic, while Britain has not, as well as the greater dependence on international student fees and weaker public science funding in Australia.

“My political nose tells me that [Australia’s] government is not greatly worried about the declining position of university science and still less about the overall position of universities in Australia. It knows that the decline of international education means that the economy will take a hit, but with this government, politics comes before economics,” Marginson said.

Comments are open for additional links or information from those more knowledgeable about the situation.

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5 responses to “Trouble for Australian universities without international students?”

  1. Kelby

    Certainly our universities are heavily reliant on those sweet $$$ from international students, which are not coming back any time soon. But the Commonwealth government also made some curious decisions to exclude the sector from the substantial economic stimulus that kept much of the rest of the economy afloat during the (so far!) worst of the pandemic:

    https://theconversation.com/why-is-the-australian-government-letting-universities-suffer-138514

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  2. Matt

    A surprising thing to me (here in Australia) is the deep complacency that the government (especially the federal government, but not only it) has shown towards vaccines. Australia hopes to _start_ giving vaccines in late Feb. This has been greatly delayed by the insistence that testing and safety be re-checked in Australia by Australian regulators. It is unclear why the Australian government would think that Australia has some special advantage or skill in testing the safety of vaccines that have been approved by the EU, the US, Canada, the UK, etc., but we are insisting on this. Supposedly there is a good plan to provide vaccines for people once they are available, but for many people this will not be until October, we're told. And, Scott Morrison, our less outwardly vulgar but still very Trump-like leader, says that he expects international borders to be largely closed until at least October. (Faster vaccination could of course speed this up, but, see the above.) I doubt that the slowness on vaccines and the opening of the borders, at least to a degree, it primarily aimed at universities, but the harm it is causing, and will cause them, is of no apparent concern to the government, despite higher education being a leading industry in Australia. As one news story had a high government official saying, few people in higher education vote for the (right wing) "Coalition" government (rightly so!) so why care about them?

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  3. Alex Miller

    When discussing the UK and Australia in this context bear in mind that (in part) because of its adoption of strict border controls and limitations on international travel, Australia, with a population of 25 million has had 909 deaths from Covid, while the UK, with a population of 66 million, has had 111,000 deaths. That means that adjusting for population size, Australia would have 2400 deaths compared to 111,000 in the UK.

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  4. Matthew Kramer

    A short but informative recent article about the situation in Australia is here: https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210203140358652

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  5. Dirk Baltzly

    The prospect of a fairly dismal economy this year means that universities expect that *domestic* student enrolments will grow and there is evidence of that. However, one should also bear in mind that the Australian federal government last year doubled student fees for studying Humanities disciplines like Philosophy, History and Classics (but not English) on the spurious grounds that graduates in these disciplines are not "job ready". Thus the signal from the Government to university vice-chancellors who are looking to make savings is very clear: "Your philosophers will be surplus to requirements. Sack those damned 'cultural marxists'(tm)!"

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