Overseas education efforts under pressure

Chris Tolhurst

Australia faces a battle on several fronts to return its overseas education market to health. Much will depend on whether students in Asia and Indian sub-continental countries have confidence that an Australian education can be a stepping stone to gaining permanent residency.

Education enrolment data shows the number of students from overseas to undertake Vocational Education and Training (VET) courses, such as in hospitality and hairdressing, fell by 77 per cent between 2009-09 and 2011-12. In the same period, the number of overseas-sourced higher education and university students fell nearly 40 per cent.

Demographer Bob Birrell, director of Monash University’s Centre for Population and Urban Research, says the stock of students on overseas student visas was just over 300,000 in December 2010. But numbers had fallen to 242,200 by December 2012. Birrell says this figure masks the full extent of the offshore student market decline, which followed a tightening of Australia’s permanent residency rules in 2009, because many VET overseas students subsequently obtained onshore visas to switch from TAFE courses into higher education.

“The key change that has had a devastating impact on the overseas student market has been to remove those who complete vocational courses from access to permanent residency by the skills visa sub-classes,” he says. “It has caused a dramatic decline in the number of visas issued offshore for the VET sector.”

Exchange rate hit

Ambitious youngsters in many parts of Asia believe that studying in Australia will impress multinational employers, and may also assist in gaining residency. Australia is geographically close to key markets such as China, India and Malaysia. But when the Australian dollar exchange rate was much lower, we also offered cheaper living and educational costs compared to other Western countries.

The market is now significantly more competitive. The high dollar has eroded the cost advantage that Australia enjoyed over competitor nations such as Canada and the US in the 1990s and early-2000s. Other countries are also targeting overseas students with big marketing budgets.

According to a study by media research company Media Tenor, Australia’s universities are falling under the radar in generating publicity overseas.

Minimal publicity

In countries such as Taiwan and Thailand, a positive TV or print mention of an overseas university can hugely influence the decisions that students and parents make about where to study. Media Tenor analysed 2600 recent media reports about education on TV news shows. “For the entire year in 2012, there was only one report on education in Australia on international TV shows,” the report says. “The low visibility of Australian education is a missed opportunity for the country to create a strong brand and an attractive image.”

Eighty per cent of Australia’s overseas VET and university students come from Asia. China, India, Korea, Vietnam and Malaysia are the top five markets.

The South African-based head of Media Tenor, Wadim Schreiner, says Australian universities perform well in global surveys ranking the quality of universities. He says there is “no issue with quality” but Australian institutions are being outflanked by the superior overseas media profile and communications efforts of some universities in the UK, the US, Canada and Asia. Schreiner says these universities routinely send staff overseas to provide “third party expertise” on topics ranging from economics to climate change.

“These staff experts essentially become the unofficial spokespeople for those universities,” he says. “This is a proven way of raising your profile.”

The International Education Association of Australia (IEAA) hopes that recommendations contained in a recent report, Australia – Educating Globally, by the federal government’s International Education Advisory Council, will turn the market around.

The report recommends expedited streamlined visa processing for “low immigration risk providers”.

More competition from source countries

IEAA president Helen Zimmerman says Australia has become a pricier place to study at a time when many student source countries are also developing their university infrastructure.

“A lot of our source countries are also becoming major education hubs, “she says. “Singapore and China have invested heavily in universities.”

Birrell says the federal government tightened residency skills tests because “they were concerned that the immigration program was being warped in the direction of too many cooks and hairdressers”.

“At the higher education level, they toughened up as well. There are much tougher rules on English language requirements for a skills visa. That has made it especially hard for the Chinese.”

Overseas education efforts under pressure