Unis told to act to meet demand of Asia's middle classes

AUSTRALIAN universities and colleges need to rewrite the rules of international education to meet unprecedented demand from Asia.

AUSTRALIAN universities and colleges need to rewrite the rules of international education to meet unprecedented demand from Asia's surging middle classes, according to opposition policy heavyweight Andrew Robb.

Mr Robb told a Brisbane forum yesterday there were endless possibilities to engage students in their home countries "if only we have the courage and freedom to grasp it".

The sheer numbers of potential students presented a market opportunity that needed to be seen as "a business problem that requires a business solution, not an academic solution".

"Universities and vocational colleges have a terrific brand they can leverage and content they can adapt -- they just need to view the opportunity through a different lens," Mr Robb said.

"For the masses in India and elsewhere, the online environment would seem the only cost-effective, scalable solution."

Mr Robb, a former vocational and further education minister, raised eyebrows in May when he said Australia could be teaching 10 million international students within a decade -- up from about 700,000 at present. His office stood by the prediction, saying he had revised his original estimate of three to eight million following industry feedback.

He said "strangling red tape" and a "one-size-fits-all approach" were preventing Australian institutions from capitalising on extraordinary demographic change in the Asia Pacific, which would boast two-thirds of the world's middle class by 2030 -- up from just 28 per cent in 2009.

He said the educational systems of countries like India, China, Vietnam and Indonesia couldn't possibly meet the demand for education and skills.

Burgeoning internet take-up, India's rollout of the "world's cheapest tablet" and exploding enrolments in massive online open courses, or MOOCs, all pointed to an online future for much of the world's tertiary education.

Mr Robb said Australia needed to identify the "largest profit pools", develop products to satisfy their needs and "get assurance that they will purchase the product in principle -- no 'build it and they will come' approaches".

Open Universities Australia chief executive Paul Wappett said the estimate of 10 million international students was "certainly ambitious but undeniably feasible".

Jim Barber, vice-chancellor of the University of New England, one of Australia's most progressive online universities, said 10 million international students was feasible but "not using the current business model".

Professor Barber said inflexible industrial agreements and a regulatory obsession with "bricks-and-mortar" educational models were preventing universities from participating in the offshore education explosion.

But Central Queensland University international education specialist Alison Owens said 10 million international students was a "pipedream" and that fully online education was only suitable for mature, postgraduate students with advanced English.

A spokesman for Tertiary Education Minister Chris Evans said the government was developing "the right infrastructure to deliver next-generation educational services. This starts with the National Broadband Network."