No Plan B if China turns the tap off: A reader learned in the ways and wiles of Beijing suggest that the comrades are not about to advise families considering an Australian university that re-education camps are much closer to home. But the learned reader does say that the international education industry needs a plan B just in case the renminbi river’s flow slows.
What, you ask, like the government’s international education strategy, prepared for the some-time, short-term international education minister, Richard Colbeck? That’s not the one, CMM replies.
Looking like work from consultants Polly, Anna & Pangloss, the Colbeck paper was big on euphoria (free trade agreements are ‘triffic for education) but light on evidence of what Australian universities should do if China started acting like a dictatorship and suborned the aspirations of its citizens to foreign policy objectives.
Unis big in business: But while export education experts say an implosion isn’t likely a slow decline in numbers is possible. In addition to Beijing bad-mouthing Australia, improving quality in the local system there could lead to more Chinese students staying at home. Degrees in demand could also change – a problem not just in the China market. If this happened in business education, for example, a range of Australian universities which rely on international enrolments in management and commerce, generally with a big proportion of students from China would be in strife. Granted things might be better for those with off-shore campuses in expanding economies, but overall some Australian universities rely heavily on the bized market.
The most recent Department of Education and Training figures reveal 15 public universities where international students account for 50 or plus per cent of people studying management and commerce. Universities where business schools are most reliant on international enrolments are: Murdoch U (80 per cent of students are classed as international), Federation U (73 per cent) Victoria U (70 per cent), UniWollongong (67 per cent), RMIT (65 per cent), ANU (67 per cent) and UniSydney (63 per cent).
Universities with international business enrolments accounting for more than 20 per cent of total students are: RMIT (25 per cent), Federation U (23 per cent), Murdoch U (23 per cent), Victoria U (24 per cent) and Wollongong U 22 per cent).