Earlier this month, The Age’s View wrote that “in 2022, international education earned this country $46.7 billion, which in the words of Universities Australia chief Catriona Jackson makes it ‘the biggest export we don’t source from the ground’ – the only more valuable ones being iron ore, coal and natural gas”.
International education is supposedly a profitable export. The conditions of entry include students having the financial capacity to support themselves for a year.
The reality is that most students arrive from poor nations with minimal financial resources and then undertake paid employment to fund their living costs and course fees.
A significant share of ‘students’ also come to Australia via bogus courses with the express purpose to work and live in Australia.
In either case, international education is by definition not an export, since most students pay for their fees and living costs via money earned by working in Australia.
Yet, the ABS, Treasury, the education sector and the media wrongly count such expenditures on living costs and course fees as an export.
The farcical nature of the international education export myth was exposed again this week when the Herald-Sun reported that demand for free food services and food banks has soared across Melbourne’s universities, with 85% of this demand coming from international students.
“The rising cost of living is what is driving this surge in demand”, Holmesglen Institute student welfare officer Liam Barwick said.
“We have seen an increase in students accessing our counselling service and free meals who have never accessed our services before”.
Swinburne Student Union president Kishaun Aloysius said there had been more than 1700 visits to the university’s food bank in the past seven weeks alone.
The majority (85%) of students using the service are international and three quarters are undergraduate, according to the report.
Victoria University Student Union president Chandra Altoff said international students are especially impacted by the increase in living costs and receive little welfare support.
“We can grab five basic items, such as rice, milk, pasta, tomato sauce, soup – it’s a lifesaver”, international student Krithika Venkatanath said. She uses the free food service most days.
“It’s so hard to juggle work and study, especially with the upfront costs and higher tuition fees for international students”, Venkatanath said.
Krithika Venkatanath, 24, is an international student at Swinburne and often uses Foodbank services. Source: Herald-Sun.
While we can feel for the plight of Ms Venkatanath, what good is it having international education exports that are better described as the working poor? How does this benefit anybody?
Ms Venkatanath has to work to pay her living costs by competing fiercely with younger Australians for jobs, as well as lean on charitable services to survive.
This is displacement of foreign student and unemplyed local alike.
The truth is international education is not a genuine “export”. They are a part of the immigration Ponzi-scheme that is designed to push asset prices higher and supress wages, ruining living standards for younger and working people.
When these international students become a drain on charitable services, then the economic and human value to the nation truly turns negative.
