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Article Excerpt
This article traces the evolution of Commonwealth policies on private overseas students from the 1970s to the present, emphasising the Commonwealth government's role in the creation of an international education market. It will be argued that while neoliberal 'market forces' rhetoric has been a key feature of its international education policies since the 1980s, the Commonwealth has shown by its actions that it fears the consequences of a truly free market in international education services.
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In just eighteen years, the total number of private overseas students enrolled for onshore study in Australian educational institutions rose from 22,487 in 1986 to roughly 320,000 in 2004 (Australian Education International, 2005; Department of Education, 1987). This increase was largely the result of Commonwealth policies which created and facilitated an international education market. This article traces the development of Commonwealth policies towards private overseas students from the 1970s to the present day. It will be argued that while neoliberal notions of untrammelled free market forces, competition and small government have driven much of the Commonwealth government's international education agenda, the government has had to increasingly play an interventionist role to protect the legitimacy of its 'free market' reforms. The paper examines and discusses the major political interventions in international education--marketing, consumer protection and immigration control--stressing the importance of crises in determining the nature of government intervention in the international education market over the last two decades.
International student policy prior to the 'free market'
After World War II, international students--predominantly from Asia--began arriving in Australia in unprecedented numbers. By the mid to late 1960s, there were approximately 10,000 private overseas students enrolled in Australian educational institutions at any given time (Department of Education, 1985, 1986, 1987; Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs, 2000; Department of Employment, Education and Training [DEET], 1992, 1995; Department of Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs [DEETYA], 1998, 1999; National Archives of Australia, n.d.). The Commonwealth government assumed that private international students, like overseas students sponsored by the government, were studying to improve the economic and social development of their homelands (Back, 1994; Lakshmana Rao, 1979). Like domestic private students, private international students in the 1950s and 1960s paid tuition fees that covered ten to fifteen per cent of the total cost of a higher education degree, the rest of the cost being paid by the Commonwealth and the states (Jolley, 1997). This subsidisation of private overseas students was mainly seen by the Commonwealth as part of its wider effort to secure good diplomatic relationships with countries in the Asia-Pacific region (Goldring, 1984).
Between 1972 and 1975 the Whitlam Labor government introduced changes to Commonwealth education policy which affected private overseas students in Australia.
First, in 1974 Whitlam abolished tuition fees for both local and international students studying at tertiary level (Williams, 1989b). This meant that private overseas students were having their education fully subsidised by the Commonwealth.
Next, the Commonwealth took over all financial responsibility for universities and Colleges of Advanced Education. Prior to 1974, the states and territories had played a major role in funding the higher education sector with increasing Commonwealth assistance; after 1974, as an unintended consequence of the Commonwealth becoming the sole funding body, the tertiary sector became a key target for federal cutbacks throughout the rest of the 1970s (Smart, 1986). Nevertheless, the expense to the Commonwealth of subsidising international students was an issue that was overshadowed for a time by concerns about overseas students migrating to Australia.
During Malcolm Fraser's time as Liberal Prime Minister, from 1975 to 1983, the chief overseas student policy issue was the problem of backdoor migration. Approximately seventy-five per cent of private overseas students were granted permanent residence in Australia during the 1970s, despite the fact that the official program was designed to cater only for bona fide students, not potential migrants (Goldring, 1984).
In 1979, the Commonwealth solved the problem of backdoor migration by compelling private overseas students to return home for two years before being eligible to apply for immigration to Australia. This practice resulted in a huge drop in private students being granted permanent residence, from seventy-five per cent in the 1970s to roughly ten per cent in 1983. The government also announced that an Overseas Student Charge (OSC) representing approximately a quarter of the average costs of an Australian university degree would be imposed on all private overseas students from 1980 onwards. The OSC charge was initially $1,500 to $2,500 depending on the type of course. Students were compelled to pay the OSC before they were issued visas. From August 1981, private students from Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific had their OSCs paid for out of the aid budget, highlighting the persistent Commonwealth attachment to notions of diplomatic goodwill regarding the private overseas student program (Andressen, 1997; Goldring, 1984;Williams, 1989a, 1989b).
The introduction of the Overseas Student Charge in 1980 was designed to act as a migration deterrent, with revenue-raising concerns coming a poor second. The projected savings of $6 million per annum on international student costs were hardly a bonanza at a time when the Fraser government was spending close to $500 million on the overseas aid budget (de Silva, 2000; Goldring, 1984). As the 1980s progressed, however, Australia's economic climate became harsher: the desirability of subsidising private overseas student education began to be seriously questioned by an economically-minded government.
International students and the impact of neoliberalism under Hawke
In March 1983, the Hawke Labor government came into office, and it held power until 1991. Like its approach to many other public policy issues, the Australian Labor Party's administration's attitudes towards overseas students proved to be increasingly influenced by neoliberal economic and social ideals imported by treasury officials from the United Kingdom's Thatcher government and the United States' Reagan government of the early 1980s. Neoliberals drew their inspiration from the post-war theories of Austrian theorist Friedrich A Hayek and US economist Milton Friedman, who argued that individual competition was the way in which humanity progressed as a species. Consequently, all impediments to free market competition, such as government regulation and public enterprise, should be removed, and the individual would decide which 'product', including education, for example, was...
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