What a drama around international student caps!
Is it mostly because this is being rushed?
Managing growth is fine. But it’s too late to cap for 2025. Many students have already enrolled. Budget commitments, including staff hires, have been made, and international student revenues are supporting not only ongoing research, but our teaching, and are sustaining economic recovery after COVID.
Those who work in universities are shocked at the idea of sudden caps, and for a very simple mathematical reason that relates to pipeline issues associated with the length of degree programs.
Imagine a university offering 3 year degrees, with 300 students, of which 90 are internationals – that is 30% internationals. Now imagine that it is told to get to 20% internationals next year. Surprise – it has to enrol zero international students next year!
But it gets odder. Now it has zero international students in 1st year, 30 in 2nd year, and 30 in 3rd year. At the end of the next two years 30 students graduate, so it has to enrol 30 more each year to stay at 20%. But the year after no international students graduate, so it enrols zero again. Over the coming years it enrols 30, 30, zero, 30, 30, zero, forever. It is a weird rollercoaster that will never end.
Let’s think about growth and make finer adjustments.
I can see the arguments for managing growth more carefully. The current situation of relying on ever more international students is not sustainable. It arises primarily from the fact that the costs of research are not being funded. Unlike in most other countries only research projects are properly funded, not the infrastructure and costs of running laboratories, libraries etc. There is also a culture of ‘skin in the game’ here – if you want a new telescope you need to show you are serious and pay half or a quarter.
The problem of unmet costs keeps getting worse because our telescopes keep getting bigger. You might not care about telescopes, but what about microscopes? Think about COVID, think about health, national security, sovereign capability, and economic prosperity. We don’t want to be a technological banana republic and we needn’t be – Australia is great at technology.
Group of Eight (Go8) universities are speaking up about all this for a simple reason. Australia has about 40 universities, the Go8 do nearly 70% of the research, and the other 30 universities account for the rest. Go8’s require the revenues to keep operating. Happily, Go8’s attract most international students, so the system has worked. That’s why it’s been left to run.
But society has begun to ask if the change is too rapid. That’s a fair question.
Some of the concerns are baseless. Some people fear that international students squeeze out Australian students but that is never the case. We just expand our operations, like any ‘business’ does. Some people fear that international students all end up as immigrants. But, in general, only about one in five students stay, if they get a job and fill a labour shortage. Some people fear that international students take up all the accommodation, but actually universities keep building accommodation and there are much bigger factors affecting housing supply across Australia. Other people worry the rapid pace of growth diminishes educational quality. But if you look at graduate outcomes and student satisfaction, things have been getting better not worse.
All that’s happened is that we went through a bust with COVID, and now we’re seeing an uneven boom as enrolments bounce back. Controlled growth is what I want too.
I urge everyone to slow down and consider this issue carefully.
We should celebrate the fact that Australia has emerged as a super-power in international education. Who would have thought we would have become the intellectual hub of the Asian time zone? How great have the benefits been in terms of soft-diplomacy, and how good is it that our country keeps building a culture that values education and innovation?
Canada, the UK, and in Trump’s days the US, sent signals deterring international students, but we have avoided scoring own goals so far. Isn’t there a better way to manage growth than imposing unworkable caps?
I cannot imagine Singapore, or indeed any of our neighbours having this conversation about any of their industries. Universities have been encouraged to be more entrepreneurial and take the weight off the public purse, to keep taxes and domestic fees low.
All this is a good reminder that we need to have more conversations. The capping stakes are so high because we have painted ourselves into a corner and now depend on international student fees to do our day to day research. It’s time to talk about that as highlighted in the Universities Accord.
So, let’s keep discussing all this. Let’s talk about the best way to manage growth rather than jump to caps. And the Minister has promised discussions. Hopefully we’ll end up in the right place.
Professor Merlin Crossley is Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic Quality at UNSW.
