What do Australians know about international education in Australia?

(This piece was published on the Australian Policy History website - click through for the full piece)

International students, and the international education sector are hitting the headlines on a regular basis at the moment. These stories are rarely positive – stories of students being accepted without sufficient English language skills, students as spies and more. There are more nuanced discussions on the role of international education in contemporary Australia, such as Margaret Simons’ essay in Australian Foreign Affairs, but they are less common.

In part this is because most Australians know so little about what is one of Australia’s largest export industries. This is not entirely the fault of everyday Australians, but also the fault of the sector itself, which has for a long time played a “small target” game – staying away from the news, and just quietly going about its business. With immigration, particularly non-white immigration, always in the news, bringing attention to a large segment of that immigration (albeit temporary) could seem unwise.

What is now becoming clear, however, is that this small target approach has created problems of its own. When international education does make the news, there is so little understanding of the sector that there is no buffer. The sector gets no free passes.

Read the full piece here.