Adelaide’s smart strategy

by DIRK MULDER

Study Adelaide has added a new “our international students” section to its website, which might seem simple but is very smart.

The site emphasises the impact internationals have on SA communities;

* 50 per cent of the state’s 1.2bn international visitor expenditure (when there was such a thing) related to international students

* they could generate 9,000 new jobs by the end of the decade

* international education replaced wine as the state’s top export earner in 2019 (which, given the state of both, makes CMM wonder what number three is).

But Study Adelaide also makes the needed point that there is more to international education than the economy, that students from 130 countries change Australia for the better (37 per cent of internationals volunteer in the community) and become a source of soft power.

Everybody in the sector knows this but those outside won’t get it unless they hear it again and again. And after a year of warnings that the industry is in crisis the business case is clearly not getting through.

Smart Study Adelaide. Let’s see which other cities are clever enough to follow.

Dirk Mulder is CMM’s international education correspondent

 Short courses to keep Brand Australia out there

The feds announce an expansion of “Study with Australia” a collection of on-line short courses, launched as the international education industry’s pandemic-panic kicked in last year, (CMM April 24 2020).

The product is a JV between MOOC provider Future Learn and Austrade.  There are now 57 courses listed from 14 universities plus three private providers – including an impressively market-specific course on drone safety in Latin America, from the Institute of Drone Technology.

The government is silent on funding for the project.