A new report prepared for the Business Council and Asia Society warns that the excessive concentration of Chinese students at Australia’s universities are stifling free speech and debate, compromising academic integrity. It also calls for entry standards to be tightened:
The paper, authored by the University of Sydney Business School’s international academic director John Shields, calls for higher entry standards for international students — including in the minimum level of English-language proficiency.
“Far from serving to diversity the student cohort, the dependence on Chinese students has instituted a form of classroom monoculturalism in which encouraging students to embrace the values of academic integrity and free debate, and facilitating the development of core capabilities in critical thinking, effective English communication and cross-cultural competence, have become increasingly difficult,” Professor Shields writes…
The report recommends that universities “tighten academic and English-language standards for Chinese students”, requiring higher scores in the Chinese end-of-school exam, the Gao Kao, and put more emphasis on the International Baccalaureate as an entry examination…
A commenter on the article neatly summarises the problem:
As an English teacher in one of Top 8 Universities in Australia, I can assure you that standards were definitely too low. Most students were allowed to pass if they made a big enough fuss. Cheating was widespread and staggeringly high and Chinese students made up 40% of those who were caught doing it. Tutors within the actual University classes following our school had similar complaints, particularly with regards to cheating.
We had this joke in that the course was called EAP – English for Academic Purposes, but I think it went something like ‘Every Adult Passes’. It has been a rort, a gravy train and our beautiful universities, with their proud histories and the many people who have made them great, sophisticated hubs have been totally gutted. Let alone the problems with free speech etc. I fully support in particular Senator James Patterson’s moves in this area.
MB has been raising these same concerns for years.
One only has to look at the next chart, taken from Associate Professor Salvatore Babones seminal report, to see that the concentration of Chinese students at Australia’s universities is extreme:
Put simply, entry standards must be tightened and Chinese student numbers must be drastically cut for the sake of university pedagogical standards and free speech.
The 13 CCP-run Confucius Institutes operating at Australia’s universities must also be shut down.
