At first, I put it down to typical foreigner-abroad clannishness: all the Chinese students filing into my feature writing tutorial had probably conspired to enrol in the same 9am Friday group for moral and social support, I mused.

I’d seen it before during 10 years of part-time – or “sessional” – lecturing and tutoring around Sydney’s universities, and indeed during decades of interviewing business professors and other academics at institutions around the world; why would the international cohorts on UNSW’s sprawling Randwick campus be any different?