Last year’s Four Corners Cash Cows report accused Australia’s universities of lowering entry and teaching standards in order to grow international student enrolments, which have nearly doubled since 2013:
The University of Tasmania (UTAS) was one of the institutes alleged to have waived their own English-language standards.
To its credit, UTAS immediately announced that it would tighten English-language requirements and launched an external review into admissions practices for international students.
This review found that 919 international students from 2018 were admitted to UTAS via an informal method of demonstrating English proficiency that the University is no longer accepting. The review also found students entering through informal entry points had a higher than average failure rate.
UTAS subsequently accepted all 19 recommendations from the review and confirmed “a strategic shift from rapid to sustainable growth in international student numbers”.
On Tuesday, UTAS announced that it would slash the number of courses it offers next year by more than 75%, from 514 to less than 120, citing an “over-reliance” on Chinese fee-paying students and the fallout from the coronavirus:
In a letter sent to staff this afternoon, Vice Chancellor Rufus Black told employees UTAS was “facing sustained headwinds to being long-term sustainable” and the number of courses was to be reduced from about 514 to 120 by next year.
Professor Black said the start of this year had demonstrated the university had an “over-reliance” on students from China, which, coupled with the emergence of coronavirus, would have “long lasting consequences”.
“The combination of these forces is proving to be a very strong headwind,” Professor Black said, adding the university was “not making enough progress to be the right size to be sustainable even in the short term”.
“The year sees us start a long way behind our budget and with more financial challenges to come.”
Now contrast UTAS’ thruthfulness against Murdoch University, which was criticised heavily by Four Corners for achieving a 92% surge in international students numbers between 2017 and 2018 by dropping English language standards and “dumbing down” courses in the pursuit of profit.
Unlike UTAS, Murdoch has spent the past year vigorously refuting the allegations made in the report by its own lecturers, and even launched legal action against Dr Gerd Schroeder-Turk – Murdoch University’s only academic representative on the Senate (the University’s highest governing body).
While it is great to see UTAS take proactive steps to clean up its unsustainable and damaging international student trade, other Australian universities are unlikely to follow suit. They are too hooked on the revenue and profits that come from selling dumbed down degrees.
Most vice chancellors and senior university administrators would prefer to act like bank executives, denying there is anything wrong and claiming they are acting in the best interests of their students, educational standards, and the broader community.
