Rocky road to integration

INTERNATIONAL and Australian students have few chances to make friends.

AUSTRALIAN universities have done well out of the globalisation of education. Most have been highly successful in capturing the floods of learners seeking top quality training in English-speaking countries.

The boom has brought with it some difficulties, as with all fast-growing industries. While overseas students' English language proficiency and welfare get the most press, there is another issue: international students are embracing an inter-cultural life, but many Australian students are not.

"I think the local students have got to want to do things differently," says Simon Marginson, professor of higher education at the University of Melbourne. "International students come here prepared to shift and do things differently but local students have no need to learn another culture, and unless they have a need to learn and change there will not be successful integration."

Educational exports are worth $13.7 billion and higher education services account for the greatest proportion of that, although vocational education and training is on the rise. There are more than 170,000 overseas students in the higher education sector, making up about 26 per cent of the total university population. Chinese, Indian and Malaysian students comprise 51 per cent of the overseas student enrolments.

One problem with the segregation between international and local cohorts is that it denies overseas students the intangible benefit they want in addition to a good education: a reasonable opportunity to achieve some intimacy with Australian life and culture through relationships with local students.

Australian Education International, a division of the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations that handles overseas students, released its 2007 Follow-up International Student Survey this year, showing just 57 per cent of international higher education students were satisfied with their contact with Australians. Australian students also miss out on something many are not really aware has value: the chance to make connections with international peers that could prove enjoyable, as well as useful in a globalised world.

Several things conspire against integration. Although Marginson identifies a lack of motivation on the part of Australians, he is by no means condemning them. "No one is willing to tackle the nub of the problem, which is the nature of the local student experience and how (students) relate to the institution in this period," he argues. Money is a problem. Students get little financial support and have to find paid employment, which can cut into hours spent on campus. "And that's been going on for a generation," Marginson says. Class sizes have leapt in the past 15 years and the opportunity for extracurricular activities has diminished.

"It adds up to not being welcome in the university," he says.

"This is an unfavourable situation; that's the opportunity cost and the potential problem. If the local students are not there and engaged, how are they going to engage in inter-cultural education?"

Griffith University's pro vice-chancellor (international) Christopher Madden agrees. "I believe the Australians are unintentionally oblivious to opportunities to integrate because they are so busy," he says. Madden believes this situation has been exacerbated by the abolition of compulsory membership of student unions, which provided funds for facilities and activities.

"Voluntary student unionism has had a significantly bad effect because I think it's the way to integrate international students, not just once a year on international day," Madden says. "It is having activities that are regular and interest-based, so they do things every week with the international students: our best friends are the ones we see regularly, doing things we enjoy."

Without those avenues, he says, universities have had to look more closely at other means of integrating students. Griffith has stepped in to fund some activities, but he says most universities are unlikely to have compensated fully for what was lost.

The classroom holds more challenges. Madden is concerned about creating an environment conducive to amicable relations between local and overseas students. This means getting the numbers right. "If you are sitting in an MBA course with 40 students and 10 are Australian and 30 are from overseas, if they come from 23 countries, that's fantastic," he says.

"If they are all from one country it's a disaster because the international students don't want to learn only with their own and the Australians don't want students from just one country either. It's really critical for the educational culture to have diversity of international students."

University of Melbourne's director, international, Tony Crooks agrees the over-concentration of some nationalities in courses is not good. "The academic rationale for having international students is to have different points of view, a global perspective on issues in the classroom," he says.

"It's not a good experience for international students. If you have paid a significant sum to study (here) and you are a Chinese student and you find yourself surrounded by other Chinese students, you have to wonder if it was the best investment."

About 30 per cent of the University of Melbourne's international students are from mainland China, and about 20 per cent from Malaysia and Singapore. Crooks is thinking hard about the numbers game these days, given he believes his university has more international students on its campus than any other (not counting international campuses).

At Melbourne, they number almost 11,000 or 27 per cent of students and will rise to 28 per cent in 2010. "When 25 per cent of the student body is international students, you need to be raising the question of how much further can you go," Crooks says.

Hence the need for clear thinking. He believes there is a domestic imperative to retain the Melbourne character of the university. "Then there is the off-shore delivery tack, opening campuses overseas catering to students in their own country. I'm nervous about that: Melbourne's major asset is brand. I am committed to the onshore Melbourne experience."

Another option is capping the numbers in faculties heavy with overseas students, such as economics, commerce and engineering, and accepting more into other faculties. Or massaging the cohort by limiting the number of undergraduates and encouraging postgraduates.

The University of NSW's pro vice-chancellor (international) Jennie Lang says her institution has worked on maintaining a diverse profile by source country and by faculty. UNSW has more than 10,500 international students among its total strength of about 42,000 and she is gratified by the level of integration that has been achieved locally. "The university has been welcoming international students for so long that people in the adjacent communities are used to seeing them in the neighbourhood. So we have seen the university community and the neighbouring community mature over time."

Australia is in what Griffith's Madden calls the third phase in its long history with international students. The first was the Colombo Plan, which ran from the 1950s, followed by the surge dating from the mid-'80s, when the government allowed universities to accept full-fee paying students. "Since about 2005 there has been much more emphasis on sustainability and particularly on partnership," Madden says. "And the traffic is two-way: Griffith is sending students overseas for internships and work placements."

Griffith's attempts to restore opportunities for contact and integration are a work in progress, he says. "We are part-way through developing integration strategies." He is keen to make available a range of open areas of various sizes. The library on the Gold Coast campus is such a place, he says, specially built for small groups and with a range of spaces.

Crooks and the Melbourne hierarchy have the advantage of the university's five graduate attributes, which include being attuned to cultural diversity and being "active global citizens". One idea is for a diploma of global citizenship for which students can earn credits by being involved in various international activities such as study abroad programs, or looking after international students during their first week on campus.

Marginson has been in on the planning, too. "You cannot do it by decree from the centre," he says of strategies. "I suspect you have to establish programs that work and then spread them, and that's going to take a while."

Although some argue it is notoriously difficult to get Australians to go abroad, because it is expensive and they do not see the point -- something that bolsters the view they are apathetic or unaware -- there is heartening evidence of a shift, according to UNSW's Lang. "We are finding that demand for international places has increased significantly in the past five years," she says.

And in a recent survey of 25,000 UNSW undergraduates, 82 per cent of the 6300 respondents said they had a strong interest in participating in some form of globalised education, which Lang rates "an amazing level of interest". UNSW was also pleasantly surprised at the apparent acceptance among students that operating in a globalised world means acquiring languages other than English.

The survey shows about half the respondents had studied a second language already. "'We are encouraging the students to focus on acquiring second languages," Lang says. "As a university we would love to encourage state governments to have compulsory languages built into primary and secondary education because it needs to start at school."

Her opposite numbers at Melbourne and Griffith agree.