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The Brain Game - Australia 2020

Published 26 May 2016

Among many things, Professor John Hearn is executive director of the Worldwide Universities Network and chair of the Australia Africa Network. He has been deputy vice chancellor for Research at ANU and for International Affairs at the University of Sydney.

On 24 May, John gave a heart-felt address at Glover Cottages about the challenges Australian universities face in continuing to attract foreign students. Much is at stake: education is our third most valuable export after coal and iron ore. With a population of 23 million, we get six percent of foreign students globally, the highest proportion of any country on a per capita basis. In 2015, 270,000 foreign students contributed $20 billion to Australia’s balance of trade, up from $17 billion in 2014 due to depreciation of the dollar.

Can such figures be maintained? Not, said John, if we don’t keep up with tertiary global trends. Our comparative advantage can disappear very quickly if we cannot at least match improvements in the universities of our competitors, not just in Europe and America, but increasingly in North Asia and some countries in South East Asia. And we won’t be able to do that if present complacency, inertia, penny pinching, ever increasing administrative burdens of academic staff at the expense of teaching and research, continues. Nor if we don’t innovate, provide more and better buildings, classrooms, laboratories, increase the number of properly-credentialed teaching staff and nurture their motivation. And not if we continue to follow remuneration trends in business by paying top university administrators enormous salaries while cutting those of teaching and research staff.

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John asserted that sustainability in education standards is about vision, dedication, the longevity of policies and trusting relationships, not the opportunism of three-year election cycles. Australia needs to double, even triple, its investment in tertiary education to remain a more attractive study destination than our overseas competitors. But although educators and presumably State and the Federal governments are aware of this imperative and have big plans for expansion, nothing much gets done. Too many administrative meetings, local complacency, a lack of funds and the ever increasing costs of getting a degree will erode Australia’s attractiveness as a desirable country for foreign students.

Report by Richard Broinowski