Immigration policies 'hit student numbers'
Release date: 28 Oct 2010
Senator Evans will fly to Beijing with university administrators next week to address the escalating students issue in the $18 billion export sector.
Heavy cuts to Australia's Skilled Occupation List for migration, along with months-long visa delays and mounting costs brought about by university fee hikes and the strong Australian dollar, have seen students choose friendlier study regimes in the US, Britain and Canada.
"It is clear that Australia is facing a downturn in international student enrolments, and that this trend can be expected to continue throughout 2011," Senator Evans said in a speech at Canberra University yesterday.
He admitted that enrolments in English courses -- a lead indicator of demand for tertiary courses -- were down and could signal a longer-term problem.
China is Australia's largest source of foreign students, accounting for 27 per cent of enrolments and a much higher proportion of university students.
Forward enrolments for next February have fallen as much as 40 per cent for some institutions and more broadly by 10-20 per cent across the industry, according to education sources in Beijing.
Senator Evans said attacks on students, an appreciating dollar, the steady increase in competition from other nations, the global financial crisis, and strengthened visa integrity arrangements "have brought these issues to a head".
"While it is essential that the rules we apply for international students uphold the integrity of our immigration program, I am committed to working with international education providers to examine how we can make Australian education offerings more competitive when weighed against the offerings of other countries," he said.
Source: The Australian
Heavy cuts to Australia's Skilled Occupation List for migration, along with months-long visa delays and mounting costs brought about by university fee hikes and the strong Australian dollar, have seen students choose friendlier study regimes in the US, Britain and Canada.
"It is clear that Australia is facing a downturn in international student enrolments, and that this trend can be expected to continue throughout 2011," Senator Evans said in a speech at Canberra University yesterday.
He admitted that enrolments in English courses -- a lead indicator of demand for tertiary courses -- were down and could signal a longer-term problem.
China is Australia's largest source of foreign students, accounting for 27 per cent of enrolments and a much higher proportion of university students.
Forward enrolments for next February have fallen as much as 40 per cent for some institutions and more broadly by 10-20 per cent across the industry, according to education sources in Beijing.
Senator Evans said attacks on students, an appreciating dollar, the steady increase in competition from other nations, the global financial crisis, and strengthened visa integrity arrangements "have brought these issues to a head".
"While it is essential that the rules we apply for international students uphold the integrity of our immigration program, I am committed to working with international education providers to examine how we can make Australian education offerings more competitive when weighed against the offerings of other countries," he said.
Source: The Australian
TERTIARY Education Minister Chris Evans yesterday set an October 2011 reporting date for the crucial review of base university funding
Release date: 27 Oct 2010
This comes amid fresh controversy over whether student HECS fees will have to rise.
The review, which will be led by former South Australian state Labor education minister Jane Lomax-Smith, will look at teaching funding rates against international benchmarks and assess the appropriate sharing of costs between the government and students. It will also examine the cost relativities of different disciplines.
The funding review has taken on greater importance because of fears of a steep fall in international markets that universities depend on to cross-subsidise domestic teaching. The HES understands Mr Evans will visit China, Australia's largest international student market, next week with a group of vice-chancellors in what the sector will see as a key visit to shore up demand amid increasing competition from North America and Britain.
The funding review comes as the Group of Eight sandstone universities this week ramped up its lobbying for increased government funding and partial deregulation of student HECS fees to allow universities to increase fees by up to 50 per cent to drive differentiation. It warned that the government's plan to uncap the supply of places from 2012 will attract significantly more students than expected and will put at risk the quality of the system in the absence of government and private funding injections.
But Universities Australia chairman and QUT vice-chancellor Peter Coaldrake said he was wary of raising the student contribution, noting that by international standards student contributions were already high.
And he warned that "past experience has been that increased student contribution has tended to come at the expense of public funding".
In the terms of reference, the government said the funding review "should be consistent with the government's agenda to ensure that fees shouldn't be a barrier to participation".
Both the National Union of Students and the National Tertiary Education Union said the government needed to ensure the system was properly funded, rather than shifting the burden more on to students.
Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Greg Craven, who has moved aggressively to expand enrolments, hit out at the Go8, claiming it is "grossly overstating" the threat to quality from the expansion agenda. He warned the group's financing proposals risked creating a binary system of well-off universities and underfunded universities.
"One likely result is that you get a group of universities that could trade a hundred years of public investment given to them by the state to charge premium rents, which would then be afforded by students with premium incomes."
Professor Craven said the sector needed the 10 per cent uplift in base funding recommended by the Bradley review, but beyond that he said the key requirement for universities was infrastructure money for more teaching spaces.
But Ed Byrne, vice-chancellor of Go8 member Monash University, said flexibility in prices was desirable to provide students with the option of more expensive teaching practices.
"If there were a broad range of permissible HECS, clearly linked to performance in education and to intensity of tuition capacity, and if there were ways of monitoring that, then you could quite easily get some diversity in HECS charges," he said.
Australian National University economist Bruce Chapman, architect of the HECS system of income-contingent loans, said an increase in student fees was unlikely to dampen demand but that it was questionable whether an increase was fair. "I don't think there is any strong case for going beyond where we are," he said.
Professor Chapman also warned that under any partial deregulation of fees all universities would tend to increase fees by similar amounts, because income-contingent HECS loans made students less price sensitive.
The Go8 aims to counter that by setting the maximum increase comparatively high at 50 per cent while encouraging price competition by offering government-supported places to TAFEs and encouraging private providers.
Source: The Australian
The review, which will be led by former South Australian state Labor education minister Jane Lomax-Smith, will look at teaching funding rates against international benchmarks and assess the appropriate sharing of costs between the government and students. It will also examine the cost relativities of different disciplines.
The funding review has taken on greater importance because of fears of a steep fall in international markets that universities depend on to cross-subsidise domestic teaching. The HES understands Mr Evans will visit China, Australia's largest international student market, next week with a group of vice-chancellors in what the sector will see as a key visit to shore up demand amid increasing competition from North America and Britain.
The funding review comes as the Group of Eight sandstone universities this week ramped up its lobbying for increased government funding and partial deregulation of student HECS fees to allow universities to increase fees by up to 50 per cent to drive differentiation. It warned that the government's plan to uncap the supply of places from 2012 will attract significantly more students than expected and will put at risk the quality of the system in the absence of government and private funding injections.
But Universities Australia chairman and QUT vice-chancellor Peter Coaldrake said he was wary of raising the student contribution, noting that by international standards student contributions were already high.
And he warned that "past experience has been that increased student contribution has tended to come at the expense of public funding".
In the terms of reference, the government said the funding review "should be consistent with the government's agenda to ensure that fees shouldn't be a barrier to participation".
Both the National Union of Students and the National Tertiary Education Union said the government needed to ensure the system was properly funded, rather than shifting the burden more on to students.
Australian Catholic University vice-chancellor Greg Craven, who has moved aggressively to expand enrolments, hit out at the Go8, claiming it is "grossly overstating" the threat to quality from the expansion agenda. He warned the group's financing proposals risked creating a binary system of well-off universities and underfunded universities.
"One likely result is that you get a group of universities that could trade a hundred years of public investment given to them by the state to charge premium rents, which would then be afforded by students with premium incomes."
Professor Craven said the sector needed the 10 per cent uplift in base funding recommended by the Bradley review, but beyond that he said the key requirement for universities was infrastructure money for more teaching spaces.
But Ed Byrne, vice-chancellor of Go8 member Monash University, said flexibility in prices was desirable to provide students with the option of more expensive teaching practices.
"If there were a broad range of permissible HECS, clearly linked to performance in education and to intensity of tuition capacity, and if there were ways of monitoring that, then you could quite easily get some diversity in HECS charges," he said.
Australian National University economist Bruce Chapman, architect of the HECS system of income-contingent loans, said an increase in student fees was unlikely to dampen demand but that it was questionable whether an increase was fair. "I don't think there is any strong case for going beyond where we are," he said.
Professor Chapman also warned that under any partial deregulation of fees all universities would tend to increase fees by similar amounts, because income-contingent HECS loans made students less price sensitive.
The Go8 aims to counter that by setting the maximum increase comparatively high at 50 per cent while encouraging price competition by offering government-supported places to TAFEs and encouraging private providers.
Source: The Australian
Vice-chancellors call for student visas
Release date: 26 Oct 2010
This would quarantine education from the overheated politics of population, according to University of NSW chief Fred Hilmer.
The visa would allow a student to stay for a qualification plus two to three years' work experience in a related field.
Any request to migrate would be dealt with separately in the immigration system.
"But you don't count those [students] as immigrants, they're not entitled to be immigrants. It will dissociate study from immigration, it will depoliticise it," he said.
Students visas bring no entitlement to migrate but, beginning in 2001, policy helped create an industry based on qualifications that led to skilled migration.
Professor Hilmer was commenting on Monash University's emergence as the first Group of Eight institution to announce budget cuts to make up for sharp declines in overseas student income.
Monash vice-chancellor Ed Byrne said Monash College, the source of half the overseas students who end up in the business faculty, had suffered a 30 per cent fall in numbers.
The export education industry has been affected by bad publicity from attacks on Indian students, a move by policy-makers to weaken the link between education and migration, the high Australian dollar and fresh competition from cash-strapped institutions in the US and Britain.
Professor Hilmer, in the same way as Professor Byrne, identified onerous visa conditions, especially the requirement to show a hefty bank balance against course fees and living costs, as a big disadvantage in a competitive market.
The University of Melbourne's chief Glyn Davis also has urged the creation of a new student visa.
"We don't have in this country a separate student visa, as many countries do," he said.
He hoped the misfortune of Monash would prompt a reconsideration of visa policy.
Victorian dual-sector universities all said they were keeping a close eye on the situation. They expected demand to be soft, but none anticipated a similar impact to Monash.
Source: The Australian
The visa would allow a student to stay for a qualification plus two to three years' work experience in a related field.
Any request to migrate would be dealt with separately in the immigration system.
"But you don't count those [students] as immigrants, they're not entitled to be immigrants. It will dissociate study from immigration, it will depoliticise it," he said.
Students visas bring no entitlement to migrate but, beginning in 2001, policy helped create an industry based on qualifications that led to skilled migration.
Professor Hilmer was commenting on Monash University's emergence as the first Group of Eight institution to announce budget cuts to make up for sharp declines in overseas student income.
Monash vice-chancellor Ed Byrne said Monash College, the source of half the overseas students who end up in the business faculty, had suffered a 30 per cent fall in numbers.
The export education industry has been affected by bad publicity from attacks on Indian students, a move by policy-makers to weaken the link between education and migration, the high Australian dollar and fresh competition from cash-strapped institutions in the US and Britain.
Professor Hilmer, in the same way as Professor Byrne, identified onerous visa conditions, especially the requirement to show a hefty bank balance against course fees and living costs, as a big disadvantage in a competitive market.
The University of Melbourne's chief Glyn Davis also has urged the creation of a new student visa.
"We don't have in this country a separate student visa, as many countries do," he said.
He hoped the misfortune of Monash would prompt a reconsideration of visa policy.
Victorian dual-sector universities all said they were keeping a close eye on the situation. They expected demand to be soft, but none anticipated a similar impact to Monash.
Source: The Australian
