By CLAIRE FIELD
They are typically thousands of miles from home, have no local support, and Australia’s way of life is often entirely foreign
According to a report in The Australian (October 30) international student pathways programmes have “negligible eligibility requirements” and are “ripe for abuse.”
Clearly TEQSA and the universities must ensure academic standards are maintained. However, if we follow this spurious argument through to its logical conclusion we would also have concerns about “negligible entry requirements” for domestic students using alternative entrance pathways. And ATAR cut-offs would be set in stone, lest standards slip.
If we are going to debate university entry requirements for international students and the increasing use of pathways programmes – we must understand our students.
They are typically thousands of miles from home, have no local support, and Australia’s way of life is often entirely foreign to them. No wonder they value extra support where it is available.
Take for example, Sveto Muhammed Ishoq who joined me this week podcast. She was a student at the American University in Kabul in 2016 when it was attacked by the Taliban. Seventeen students died and 53 were injured. Sveto was one of the lucky ones.
We met in 2018 when she was an international student (a Schwarzman Scholar) at Tsinghua University – she is a remarkable young woman.
While few international students will experience something as horrific as a terrorist attack, the lives students live before coming to Australia and the stress and challenges they face while studying here mean we cannot assume that seeking extra support in their first year of study is a bad thing.
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A final note following the US election: Dr Jill Biden is an educator of long-standing in the community college sector. She was the talk of the community college conference I attended in Chicago in 2016. Her policy proposals and commitment to her students stand in marked contrast to the reprehensible actions of the current administration.
Claire is an adviser to the tertiary education sector and the host of the “What now? What next?” podcast