Wednesday, September 14, 2005

AUSTRALIA A POPULAR EDUCATIONAL DESTINATION

The following article appeared in the Brisbane "Courier Mail" on Sept 8th, 2005 under the heading "Overseas Uni student levels reach world high". That Australia is an English-speaking country in close proximity to Asia is of course a major factor. Most overseas students in Australia are Asian, particularly from nearby Malaysia, where Chinese are discriminated against. ("HECS" are student fees)

Australian university classrooms have the highest proportion of international students in the world, according to a new report. The report, Education Without Borders, has revealed almost 18 per cent of students at Australian university are from overseas. According to the report, the number of international students in Australia jumped from about 12 per cent in 1998 while the average for all other countries remained largely stagnant.

However, the release of the report has coincided with new figures showing almost a third of HECS-paying Australian students are likely to never pay off their debt.

Written by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the report found education was Australia's fourth largest export. In 2003-04, education services reaped $5.9 billion for the Australian economy, from 13 per cent in 2002-03.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said the nation's education sector was booming because Australia was regarded as a safe and friendly destination with a reputation for quality tertiary services. "Whether people like it or not. English has become the language of international discourse, not national but international discourse, and the fact that Australia is an Anglophone country, the fact that students study in Australia in English is a significant advantage for Australia as well," he said.

However. Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said the report ignored the fact that the rate of Australia's education exports growth was actually falling. Mr Rudd said the rate of growth in Australian education exports had halved under the Howard Government from 22.1 per cent to 10.2 per cent between 1996 and 2004. "Today's report does acknowledge that our universities have been losing ground in the highly competitive market for international students relative to other countries," he said. "If Australia can't compete in our own region, cash-starved Australian universities stand to lose millions of dollars in student fees which they are now dangerously dependent on following nine years of funding cuts."

The report shows international student numbers increased from 35,290 in 1994 to 151,798 in 2004. Chinese students dominated enrolments. The US remained the most popular destination for globe-trotting students with almost 600,000 international enrolments.




CHANGE COMING IN UNIVERSITIES?

The article from The Economist excerpted below notes that the huge numbers of students now going on to higher education is putting a big strain on the old system of university education. It then goes on to look at how universities might change in response:

Techno-utopians believe that higher education is ripe for revolution. The university, they say, is a hopelessly antiquated institution, wedded to outdated practices such as tenure and lectures, and incapable of serving a new world of mass audiences and just-in-time information. “Thirty years from now the big university campuses will be relics,” says Peter Drucker, a veteran management guru. “I consider the American research university of the past 40 years to be a failure.” Fortunately, in his view, help is on the way in the form of internet tuition and for-profit universities.

Cultural conservatives, on the other hand, believe that the best way forward is backward. The two ruling principles of modern higher-education policy—democracy and utility—are “degradations of the academic dogma”, to borrow a phrase from the late Robert Nisbet, another sociologist. They think it is foolish to waste higher education on people who would rather study “Seinfeld” than Socrates, and disingenuous to confuse the pursuit of truth with the pursuit of profit.

The conservative argument falls at the first hurdle: practicality. Higher education is rapidly going the way of secondary education: it is becoming a universal aspiration. The techno-utopian position is superficially more attractive. The internet will surely influence teaching, and for-profit companies are bound to shake up a moribund marketplace. But there are limits.

A few years ago a report by Coopers & Lybrand crowed that online education could eliminate the two biggest costs from higher education: “The first is the need for bricks and mortar; traditional campuses are not necessary. The second is full-time faculty. [Online] learning involves only a small number of professors, but has the potential to reach a huge market of students.” That is nonsense. The human touch is much more vital to higher education than is high technology. Education is not just about transmitting a body of facts, which the internet does pretty well. It is about learning to argue and reason, which is best done in a community of scholars.

This survey will argue that the most significant development in higher education is the emergence of a super-league of global universities. This is revolutionary in the sense that these institutions regard the whole world as their stage, but also evolutionary in that they are still wedded to the ideal of a community of scholars who combine teaching with research.

The problem for policymakers is how to create a system of higher education that balances the twin demands of excellence and mass access, that makes room for global elite universities while also catering for large numbers of average students, that exploits the opportunities provided by new technology while also recognising that education requires a human touch.

As it happens, we already possess a successful model of how to organise higher education: America's. That country has almost a monopoly on the world's best universities, but also provides access to higher education for the bulk of those who deserve it. The success of American higher education is not just a result of money (though that helps); it is the result of organisation. American universities are much less dependent on the state than are their competitors abroad. They derive their income from a wide variety of sources, from fee-paying students to nostalgic alumni, from hard-headed businessmen to generous philanthropists. And they come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, from Princeton and Yale to Kalamazoo community college.

This survey will offer two pieces of advice for countries that are trying to create successful higher-education systems, be they newcomers such as India and China or failed old hands such as Germany and Italy. First: diversify your sources of income. The bargain with the state has turned out to be a pact with the devil. Second: let a thousand academic flowers bloom. Universities, including for-profit ones, should have to compete for customers. A sophisticated economy needs a wide variety of universities pursuing a wide variety of missions. These two principles reinforce each other: the more that the state's role contracts, the more educational variety will flourish.




Public school daze: "Despite years of effort to improve American education, many students' schools will not provide them the basic skills needed to enter college or succeed in a career. Some states' public schools graduate as few as 55 percent of students. U.S. test scores versus other countries' decline the longer students are in school. Teachers complain of overwhelming bureaucracy and government mandates. Public school expenditures per student continue rising, even though higher expenditures don't produce better student performance. ... Clearly, our public school problems are not related to lack of money. But because the government has a near monopoly on education, and taxpayer support and student attendance are mandatory, the public school system is insulated from market forces and competition that might produce improvements."

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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