Australia: News and Views

Australia has made good money in recent year by selling ther excellent education system to foreigners. Not only do Australian tertiary level (universtiies and TAFEs) set up campuses overseas, often in Asia, but many students come to study in Australia under student visas.

The publicity has been a bit ugly recently though with attacks on several Indian students in Melbourne leading to diplomatic level talks between Australian and Indian governments to try and difuse the situation. Then the collapse of a doubtful  training provider saw large number of Indian student potentially out of pocket -though it sounds like the various insurance and government agencies will sort this mess out.

The point really is that the Australian tertiary education system is just fine - the problem is the student visa system which strongly favours those who have a student visa if they then want to apply for permanent residency. This is not, by the way for people with advance engineering or science degrees - no this is more for cooking classes and hairdressers! Now I would rather have my Indian chef trained in Bombay rather than Bondi! The opening for abuse is obvious.

Maybe too that the Australian government should be looking to the future - teaching sells is huge - but not at a country level - but online and globally - for just how much longer are students going to be prepared to spend thousands of dollars and move to a foreign country when the same education is available onlne and often for much lower cost?

The future is huge and but its online and many traditional education providers really need to be looking more closely at what their online competitors are doing.

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