Foreign students want universities to ‘ring-fence’ tuition fees
Tired of being treated as cash cows for financially stricken universities, international students are hitting back and demanding their tuition fees be ‘ring-fenced’ to fund affordable accommodation and high-quality teaching.
International students are demanding their tuition fees be “ring-fenced’’ to pay for cheap accommodation and transport, instead of cross-subsidising research and domestic student services.
Complaints about universities cashing in on foreign students, and the high cost of housing, have been aired at a NSW parliamentary inquiry probing university governance.
The NSW International Student Representative Committee has told the inquiry that revenue from foreign students’ tuition fees should be reinvested in affordable student housing.
It argues that foreign students are not getting value for money for their fees, which can exceed $60,000 a year.
“The current university model is systematically dependent on ever-increasing margins drawn from international student enrolment fees, without a discernible return that benefits this cohort,’’ the committee says in a submission to the inquiry.
“Instead, many international students are forced to pay over-inflated rent in housing that is far from campus, often under illegal and exploitative contracts, and pay full fares on public transport to access campus and a social life.’’
The committee says international student revenues should be “transparently ring-fenced for the legitimate costs of teaching and student support … rather than being absorbed into unrelated operations’’.
The NSW Audit Office has calculated that revenues from international students soared 25 per cent last year, when universities earned almost twice as much from overseas students than local enrolments.
Students from China, India and Vietnam paid $3.1bn in tuition fees to 10 universities in NSW last year.
Most Australian universities will enrol even more international students next year, after federal Education Minister Jason Clare granted an extra 15,010 first-year enrolments nationally, raising the total cap to 160,850.
The University of Sydney – where almost half of all students hail from overseas – is the only institution that had its quota frozen, until it builds more student accommodation.
Australia’s elite universities are raising tuition fees for foreign students next year by two or three times the rate of inflation
The University of Melbourne will increase fees by 6.9 per cent for international undergraduate degrees, with a full Bachelor of Biomedicine to cost $212,384 and a Bachelor of Commerce $189,947.
At the University of Sydney, fees for international students will rise 5 per cent next year, to cost $60,000 for the first year of a pharmacy degree, $49,200 for nursing and $52,500 for architecture.
The NSW parliamentary inquiry has heard that foreign students are losing trust in Australia’s higher education system.
“Most arrive believing they are entering a leading public university system offering a high-quality education, and soon discover that a significant portion of what they pay is not directly invested in teaching or student services but absorbed into general operating expenditure,’’ the international student committee told the inquiry.
“The NSW government should encourage universities to ring-fence international tuition as a restricted funding class, and require universities to report to state parliament and publish an annual International Student Tuition Impact Statement linking that income explicitly to the direct costs of course delivery … support services, supervised learning spaces … (and) mental health and career readiness programs aligned with visa conditions.’’
The complaints coincide with the establishment of a new peak student body – the International Students Representative Council of Australia – to advocate for foreign students’ rights.
Its inaugural president, Weihong Liang, a PhD candidate in political science and fellow of the University of Sydney’s governing senate, said it is wrong that universities are using international student revenue to “pay for operating the whole system’’.
“It looks like the whole system relies on international student fees to fund infrastructure,’’ he told The Australian.
“That means the students’ education is not the priority.’’
Mr Liang, from China, said many international students have come from countries where it is normal to live on campus – an option usually not available to them in Australia.
“In Australia, less than 10 per cent of students live on campus but universities should be a community for people to live and study,’’ he said.
Universities Australia told the NSW inquiry that universities “are facing serious underfunding that limits our capacity to continue delivering world-class teaching and life-changing research’’.
And the University of Sydney said a “broken system of research and infrastructure funding is too reliant on revenues from international students’’.
The NSW Legislative Council inquiry is chaired by Labor member Sarah Kaine, a former union organiser who lectured in management at the University of Technology Sydney for 10 years.
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