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Exploitative higher education internationalisation is dead

Nearly a decade ago, concerns about the West’s approach to internationalisation of higher education and about how international students were being exploited to boost university coffers were raised in higher education discussions in Australia and abroad. However, the discussions fell on deaf ears and were set aside after higher education institutions denied that this was the case.

The issue has resurfaced in various articles in University World News by authoritative figures in international higher education.

Recently, the Australian media has reported on unethical approaches to internationalisation of higher education.

The articles highlight the following issues of concern: first, the very high level of tuition fees that international students are charged; second, concerns that universities may be lowering English language proficiency levels in order to recruit larger numbers of international students; and third, the fact that there are few job opportunities available for international students to gather work experience pertaining to their area of study.

The list of low-quality approaches to internationalisation is endless.

For instance, the ABC News article “Poor English, few jobs: Are Australian universities using international students as ‘cash cows’?” by Robert Burton-Bradley explores the exploitation issue.

The article suggests that international students are “set up for failure” because they arrive with little or no basic English communication skills. He says ABC’s investigation “uncovered an abundance of international students who describe struggling to communicate effectively in English, participate in class, or complete assignments adequately”.

The English question

For international students to study at Australian universities, they must first pass an industry recognised language test, the most common of which is the International English Language Testing System or IELTS.

Many university courses accept IELTS scores between six and seven, but IELTS says those scoring in this range need to work more on their English before they enter a university in Australia. The federal government sets a minimum IELTS score of 5.5 to obtain a student visa but allows students with a score as low as 4.5 to obtain a visa, according to ABC, if they enrol on a short English language pathway course before entering higher education.

It also says that Minister for Education Dan Tehan told ABC News that international student language abilities for entry were a matter for universities.

Another article by ABC says there is evidence that some Australian universities have been waiving their own English entry standards to attract more international students, and reports academics saying that they are seeing “record numbers of academic misconduct cases and increasing numbers of international students who are struggling”.

The president of the Council of International Students Australia, Bijay Sapkota, has identified additional barriers to success facing international students going to Australia, including financial stress, workplace exploitation, mental health issues and racism.

Cash cows?

The ‘international student recruitment industry’ is estimated to bring around AU$32 billion (US$22.4 billion) to AU$34 billion (US$23.9 billion) a year to Australia alone and yet international students receive little help to succeed within Australia and elsewhere on an academic, personal or professional basis.

ABC’s Four Corners programme recently reported: “Australia’s higher education system is being undermined by a growing reliance on foreign fee-paying students.” It was noted that “higher education institutions that only a few years ago were cash strapped are now flush with billions of dollars brought in from fee-paying international students”.

Questionable priorities

More worrisome are reports that the funds are largely spent on the recruitment of non-academic staff as opposed to teaching staff, amid reports that teaching standards are falling.

According to the Department of Education, in 2009 there were 35,817 full-time equivalent academic staff at Australia’s universities versus 58,167 non-academic staff. By 2017, full-time equivalent academic staff had grown to 44,057 versus growth in non-academic staff to 69,557, the difference having grown from 22,350 to 25,500.

The question also arises: How does the Western notion of internationalisation fare in other Western international higher education spaces, for example, in the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and the European Union? Is the international higher education experience similar to the Australian internationalisation experience?

It is time to make ‘the call’ and pronounce that this kind of exploitative internationalisation is dead and has served its purpose.

This kind of internationalisation is also rooted in colonialist ideas, the importing of ‘talent’ from the colonies in exchange for the export of Western forms of knowledge and information communication technologies. All this in the absence of visible linkages to pedagogy or to the empowerment of communities and their sustainable quality of life.

Transforming international higher education

Internationalisation in higher education has continued to adopt the old communication development paradigm which involved the export of notions of modernisation with the promise in return of improved quality of life for ‘less developed’ communities.

‘Less developed’ communities, called by various names in the literature, often remain without modern infrastructure, machinery, technology, adequate human capabilities and other necessary life-sustaining resources.

Within that communication development context, the Western internationalisation model has continued to target students from developing countries and to exploit less developed communities under the guise of education and a promise of better jobs and a better quality of life. The business-corporate models remain directed towards attracting foreign students into academic programmes that are designed, delivered and sold by Western education entities.

As international higher education change agents in a complex, rapidly shifting international higher education sphere, should we not work as a collective to agitate for change to humanise international higher education and re-energise it with moral values?

Should we not work to move it from a business model to a values-based model with a pedagogic focus, from exploiting vulnerable communities to empowering future glocal (local and global) communities so they can build the capacity for sustainable futures and meet the United Nations 2030 Sustainable Development Goals?

Are we not open to seeking innovative context-based approaches to glocalise learning with a pedagogic purpose through the integration of local and global higher education in respectful mutual exchange of Western and indigenous knowledge? Should we not reinstate international higher education as a democratic endeavour in order to revitalise a values-based education which centres on the importance of developing good citizens?

Dr Fay Patel has 30 years teaching, research and educational development experience in international higher education (in Australia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Canada, New Zealand, the United States and South Africa). She is an international higher education consultant on higher education: glocalisation of learning; quality assurance; online learning design; higher education transformation; and sustainable social change among world communities. Her recent publications include: “Glocal development for sustainable social change” in the Handbook of Communication for Development and Social Change, Springer, Singapore; “Deconstructing internationalization: Advocating glocalization in international higher education” in the Journal of International and Global Studies, Volume 8 Number 2, April 2017; and Online Learning: An educational development perspective (2014). The thoughts expressed here are her own and are an extract from an article in progress for presentation and publication.