The greed of Australia’s top universities has no cap

Newly arrived post graduate students from Shanghai at Sydney University.

Stupidity and greed are a bad combination. Think Al Capone. Think Alan Bond. Think Australia’s elite universities.

The latter dynamited our university system by mainlining on lucrative international students, who disappeared with Covid. Now they are at it again. Overseas students are being mustered like brumbies and every reform is resisted like poison. Overwhelmingly, international students enrol in big brands such as the University of Sydney and the Australian National University. It is not about good education, just the right rubber stamp. It is like a cattle market where the cows are lured, not herded.

Cattle is the right expression.For universities such as those in the Group of Eight, international students are cash cows. They are there for their high fees, not their education and wellbeing. So well-heeled institutions have ruthlessly stockpiled these students. Their great educational qualification is that they are just so much more fiscally winsome than low-paying Australians whose fees are set by government.

The greed of elite institutions has no cap. Before Covid, ANU had almost 50 per cent international students. Competitors such as Sydney and Monash were around 40 per cent. Particularly valuable are well-heeled Chinese students. As one former sandstone vice-chancellor exulted in an academic group, they would keep enrolling wealthy Chinese until someone stopped him.

Despite the lesson of Covid that the tap suddenly can be turned off, these guys are gorging like wolverines. They want to match or exceed pre-Covid heights. Like the Bourbon kings, they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing. They certainly do not remember the disaster of Covid when their entire business model collapsed.

Then, Go8 vice-chancellors were wringing their hands and pressuring governments to restart international students, virus-ridden or not. They still refuse to accept that their cash mules are inherently vulnerable. Another virus, a more hostile China banning Australian students or a major shift in student demand would leave the Universities of Pride high and dry again.

Bo8 boss Professor Brian Schmidt

The knock-on effects through the sector have been profound. When Covid blockaded international students, the elites enrolled Australian students who normally would have gone to other universities. They were not wanted, there was no commitment, but fodder always relieves a drought.

Now, sandstones and sandy concretes have widened their web. They previously regarded many students from the subcontinent as infra dig. Now they are being scooped up not because they fit aristocratic university profiles but because money is money. Universities that previously supplied supportive, quality education to these students are left fuming and financially bereft. This is less market failure than a competitive con job.

The public goods sacrificed in this unequal exchange are enormous. International students are short-changed. Australian students discounted. Regional universities gazumped. Sectoral diversity discouraged.

Now, the enrolment guzzlers are opposing every possible reform. They put the rent back into rent seekers. A first proposal was for a percentage cap on international enrolments at any given institution Hysterics, tantrums and vapours ensued, and the idea was washed away in a flood of crocodile tears about discrimination against international students.

Greg Craven

Now there is a new idea on the block. The Australian Universities Accord interim report floats the idea not of a cap on international students but a levy on their fees.

The proceeds collected by government would be put into a reserve against future Covid-type events, used to fund student equity, applied to less wealthy universities or a combination of all.

The proposal seems so reasonable that even a testy rhinoceros would concede. Who can argue against assurance, equity and the promotion of institutions such as regional universities? The answer is the Go8. With their cushy international Ponzi scheme, they are peddling arguments as revealing as they are inane.

International students might be used as cash cows. For heaven’s sake, they are already mooing in stonewalled quadrangles. A compulsory levy might reduce competition between universities. Profoundly unlikely, given the overwhelming numbers already concentrated in a handful of universities. In 2021, Sydney University alone collected $1.3bn in international student fees.

International students would not receive value for money. They are already scalped like victims of a particularly usurious pawnbroker. International students might go elsewhere.

International students from Thai Airways Flight pictured arriving the Brisbane International Airport before starting their university courses.

A 5 per cent levy, for example, would have zero effect on a student already prepared to pay big fees to study in Australia. Anyway, the levy would be on universities, not students. Surely, tertiary aristocrats would not pass on the hike to the international students they love so much?

This would be a tax on particular groups of individuals. Yes, it is, like stamp duty, payroll tax and dog licence fees.

The best is saved for last. How could anyone contemplate money being passed from rich to less privileged institutions? Clearly, these people have never grasped the purpose of income tax. Perhaps they don’t pay any.

This international student levy is a genuine opportunity to improve the higher education sector. It helps provide for Covid-esque crashes and spreads money to equity students and institutions.

For those who adulate established universities over “lower quality” institutions, think of this. Which universities have devalued freedom of speech; peddled postmodernism; dissed Western civilisation; minimised anti-Semitism; and genuflected to Trotskyist student unions? It is not the universities of Newcastle or New England

Greed may be good but it is never good education policy.

Greg Craven is a constitutional lawyer and former vice-chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.