Interview with ABC Radio

Thanks for all the emails and SMSes re the interview. It’s been cropped a fair bit for the program, but here, as requested – the transcript. I’ve left out the bits by Jimmy Koh, Daryl Fong and others. Nah.

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Richard Aedy: Back in Australia, among today’s international students, it seems there are growing grievances about the quality of the education that they’re getting for the tens of thousands that they pay. And in some states, that’s compounded by other issues – like a refusal to give international students concessions for public transport.
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Me: The bureaucrats assume that international students are these rich punks who can afford the ridiculous fees that they put on us, and so therefore we must be able to afford that little bit more for transport. And that’s actually a really inaccurate assumption. There are many, many international students whose families are from a poor background. So they’ve invested a lot, basically, in sending their children here.

The irony is how much they go on about internationalising education more, attracting more international students, having a more diverse community. But when you put that against a simple thing like transport concessions, it doesn’t have to take that much away from the $5.9 billion that international students contribute to the Australian economy. And yet, [this] – it’s something that’s pissing international students off, honestly.
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Fees is probably the largest consideration for most international students. The thing is, we have an ESOS Act (which stands for Education Services for Overseas Students), and that is supposed to protect us from increasing fees midway through our programs. Now, a couple of universities (at least) have tried to circumvent that by including this disclaimer, that fees are subject to changes, in the Certificate Of Enrolment.

Jonathan Gadir: So basically what we’re talking about is, in the middle of a course, suddenly the university says to you, oh sorry, the price [has] gone up.

Me: Yes. A lot of international students, and their families, save up an entire lifetime of savings in order to send their kid here. And [Australia’s] not a cheap place to live in. The cost of living is high. The bulk of international students come from China, India and South East Asia, where the currency exchange is not favourable, and the cost of living is a lot lower. So to come from that context to [Australia] is a big leap and it’s a very big financial strain on a lot of them.

JG: Is Australia becoming a second-best option, given these things?

Me: Yes, increasingly so. In the past, Australia used to be a good combination of low cost and fairly prestigious degree. But now with the increasing costs, they’re becoming on par if not more [in costs] than some UK and US universities – that’s the perception among many Asian countries, in light of the increasing fees – that they can get a comparable, if not higher quality education, elsewhere.


Technorati: Australia, international education, higher education