HIGHER EDUCATION IN A BORDERLESS WORLD
THE AMBASSADOR SERIES
Global Higher Education and the Contribution of Australia to its Growth
It is a pleasure to be asked to speak on the topic of borderless higher education and Australia’s role in international education, under the auspices of the Management and Science University’s series on leadership.
It is also timely that the Leadership series focus on borderless higher education. We are witnessing a phenomenon in higher education with scholars (that is researchers and students) moving across national borders in massive numbers, in a way never seen before.
This is a transformative moment in the history of education, and way that education affects our societies and economies.
While the great universities of both the east and the west …. I am talking of Nalanda in what is now modern India, Al-Azhar in Egypt, and in the great European universities of Bologna, Cambridge and Vienna - always attracted international scholars, it is the size of the scholarly mobility that is history changing.
In fact some researchers predict that 8 million students will be outside their home country by 2025.
This scholarly mobility is not just changing how we think about higher education, but how we think about labour, economics and nationhood.
Just as the internet changed how we think about communication, and new communication technologies changed the nature of business, this global movement of people is changing the very essence or meaning of what we understand about higher education.
As students and researchers traverse the globe, and more than half of you here today will be part of this diaspora, they move their labour, their economic output and their intellectual capital from their country of citizenship to another.
That labour and intellectual capital is often used for the benefit of the host country, but also sometimes for the benefit of a third country (for example in the cases of the transnational university branch campuses, and there are now 162 of these!) or increasingly for shareholders or investors in the same or a different country (in the case of the newer education corporate entities such as Apollo and Laureate).
How did this happen? How did small communities of scholars in specific locations – students and teachers from the same city or town hosting a small number of international – transform into these networked, corporate global institutions that operate internationally regardless of state or national borders?
Clearly this shift did not happen overnight. It was part of an incremental change occurring over the last sixty years. And I believe that Malaysia … and Malaysians …. were a catalyst for these changes, with Australia playing an important role as well.
For a middle power, which is a relatively young and geographically-isolated country, Australia’s education sector today has a strong international focus. With 20% of the undergraduate student body made up of international students, and more than half of our academic workforce born in other countries, this is one the highest international proportions of international scholars in the world. With branch campuses of Australian universities established in three other continents, the Australian education sector can be said to be truly international. In fact Australia is now viewed as a global leader in international education.
Australia was welcoming students from this region – principally Malaya - from as early as 1920. And then in 1951, when the iconic Colombo Plan commenced - scholarship students - the overwhelming majority of them Malaysian - began to study in our universities as part of a formal engagement with international education in the region.
This early entry into international education was to profoundly change Australia – international students brought their values and culture to Australia – and helped make Australia the multicultural, outward-looking and tolerant society it is today.
It also means Malaysians saw Australia as a natural study destination and Australian values as compatible and understandable, notwithstanding religious and cultural differences.
In Australia, when university fees were introduced and the sector deregulated, larger numbers of international students began to travel to Australia for the quality and value for money education offered at Australian universities, together with the easy going and welcoming lifestyle.
Malaysia at this time started to open up its own private education sector, catering principally for domestic demand and now increasingly to meet international demand.
Australia was one of the first countries to introduce safe-guards for international students, introducing the Education Services for Overseas Students Act in 1991 to protect the interests of students, not just their welfare interests but the financial investment their families have very often made in sending the student to Australia.
In response to its own needs, Malaysia established the National Accreditation Board, now the Malaysia Qualifications Agency, to establish a national framework for quality and qualification recognition.
Today, Australia currently hosts around 620,000 international students, studying programs from high school, English, vocational and technical, undergraduate and post-graduate programs.
In fact around 20% of our higher education sector comprises international students.
Australia’s education institutions are now deeply engaged in international education within a truly internationalised sector - from hosting students, to sending Australian students abroad, to having an international curriculum and extensive international research linkages.
This engagement and the collaborations pave the way for productive economic relationships that bring significant financial benefits for Australia – currently the international education sector generates – $A19 billion (that is 57 billion ringgit) per year in foreign income – our third highest export earner behind coal and iron ore.
But it is beyond the dollar signs and the university campuses that we see the benefits:
We see benefits in
• a greater sense of social wellbeing – building multicultural understanding that underpins tolerance and stability not just in Australia but I am sure through the efforts of international students when they return home;
• Greater international influence – a positive image of Australia internationally and diverse diplomatic partnerships – the so-called “soft power”;
• Cultural diversity and cohesion – the reception of knowledge and innovation from around the world
Competition for scholars – students and academics – can only be a good thing. Modern students have more choices for study destinations than ever before and scholars now increasingly looking to work and research in different cultural contexts. I can contrast that with my own expectations as university freshman in 1988, when I saw my university experience as spending four years in the same faculty, in the same university, in the same country. My children will have no such limitations.
This also means that students and their parents will have a large number of choices of education providers. In turn, those providers, in Australia, Malaysia and elsewhere, must convince them that they offer a high quality education experience and environment across a range of factors.
Australia has most recently focused on the quality of the higher education sector, the student experience and the outcomes for students.
Two recent surveys support provide encouragement that we are on the right track:
On student experience:
• 94 per cent of international students studying in Australia indicate satisfaction with their Australian study experience, and
• 86 per cent were satisfied with their living experience.
The top four things that influenced the students’ decisions to study in Australia were: the quality of the teaching, the reputation of the qualification, personal safety and the reputation of the institution.
And with student outcomes, students are not just satisfied with their Australian study experience, graduates of Australian education programs also report positive experiences upon graduation.
85% of graduates from 2004-2006, were employed by 2008 and only 6% were seeking work, with the remainder mostly pursuing further study.
And recently the Lisbon Council, a think tank and policy network articulating strategies for current and future challenges in the world, found Australia to have the best University system in the world for its ability to meet 21st century challenges of sustaining our society, of empowering and equipping the largest possible number of citizens to take their place as the social and intellectual backbone of our societies.
As with any fast growing sector, the news is not always positive, and we know that some areas need improvement. News media both here in Malaysia and internationally have reported on the challenges Australian international education has faced, from:
• Sudden closures of private education colleges by operators;
• Violence against some international students from India,
All these incidents have seen Australia’s reputation in the international education arena questioned.
Add to these the
• increased cost of Australian education due to the rise of the dollar and
• increased marketing activity from UK and USA,
and the sector has certainly been through what some have called the “perfect storm”.
After three years of exhaustive reviews into Australian international education and a range of changes to legislation and policy, - the perfect storm may well have passed. We’ve identified we can do more and I am confident Australia has some further significant contributions to make to global understanding of higher education.
The past three years for Australia provide valuable lessons that will shape the future growth of higher education globally.
What are those lessons? Focusing on quality and on the overall student experience must be always at the forefront of the minds and actions of policy makers, academics and the managers of educational institutions. While the degree or diploma is the critical outcome sought by students, (and often the parents who are funding the study), it is all the collection of life experiences and memories, and friends from various backgrounds that graduates take most from their education experience.
Australia’s new International Students Strategy identifies the responsibilities across government for the wellbeing of international students, the quality of the education offered by education providers, improved consumer protection mechanisms and obligations for provision of information ….. all designed to ensure international students have a positive experience in Australia.
Our international students are our best ambassadors for our higher education and training system. Their experience means they form bonds and friendships that transcend geographic and cultural boundaries and identify with a truly borderless world of education, research and often commerce.
Australia’s experience is also that it is not all about a one-way flow of students – international education must be a two way flow of ideas, of people (both students and researchers.) I think this year marks the “tipping point” – and the beginning of a new dynamic in the international education relationship between Australia and Malaysia.
In future Australian international education in Malaysia will not be about Malaysian students travelling to Australia but students from Malaysia and elsewhere studying Australian programs here in Malaysia.
With 19,000 Malaysian students currently studying in Australia, there is now the around the same number of students studying Australian programs in Malaysia!
Add to this the growing numbers of Australian students coming to Malaysia for a short study program, exchange and internship and the bilateral education relationship is truly one of partnership.
In fact this relationship is one that is a defining aspect of Australia’s success in international education.
And now Malaysia is an education hub or destination in its own right.
There is no doubt that the Australian public education partnerships with private education providers in Malaysia have contributed to this growth. Malaysia’s increasingly vibrant education sector is a sustainable and very concrete outcome of Australia’s engagement in international education. And there are other elements of this engagement that are based on the partnership in education that Australia and Malaysia have forged.
You may not be aware that Australia and Malaysia run a joint training program for master teacher trainers....not from Australia, or Malaysia......but from Afghanistan.
Since 2009 our countries together have worked together as co-donors to support the training of teachers for schools in war-torn Afghanistan.
In fact this small program, the product of our education partnership and delivered right here in Kuala Lumpur, has been described by the Government of Afghanistan as “critical to improving educational outcomes in Afghanistan. Teachers are the foundation of a society and we need well informed and skilled teachers in Afghanistan.”
And the numbers are impressive – in 2001 there were less than 800,000 children in school (no girls) and by last year, 6.4 million children in schools (one third girls).
This unique trilateral aid project, involving education development regardless of state borders is another example of the fundamental changes occurring in education, where national borders and citizenship become increasingly irrelevant.
These changes are challenging policy makers and regulators to keep pace with the innovation and development that characterises the sector. Fundamental questions about national frameworks for educational qualifications, and for recognition of those qualifications, and for quality assurance, are being reassessed to ensure they are adequate and robust enough to meet the challenges of borderless education.
In Europe the Bologna accord has seen a harmonisation of educational qualifications – meaning the behind the border barriers for scholars to move between universities in different countries in the European Union are reduced, and this together with immigration changes allowing free travel across EU member country borders, all contribute to scholar mobility.
For us in South East Asia these are challenges are still to be overcome.
Domestic regulation needs to match the vision of a borderless education world where knowledge and its proponents flow freely.
At the beginning of my speech I spoke about the worldwide movement of human capital across borders and how this changes our notions of labour and of nationhood. Policy makers are now challenged to ensure domestic laws support this fluid environment rather than impose artificial barriers disguised as quality or safety mechanisms. This requires qualification frameworks that are at their highest point - harmonious, and at the very minimum, complementary, through labour and migration regulation that makes the movement across borders as simple as logging onto the internet, and through domestic regulation that encourages education innovation and growth, without any expense to quality
Multilateral government to government processes an structures such as UNESCO, ASEAN and the East Asia Summit are all grappling with these issues. Parochialism and protectionism in areas such as regulations for teaching permits and student visas can act as blockages that prevent the flow of scholars, and the flow of ideas, and policy makers need to be vigilant to ensure their efforts to ensure an appropriate level of protection or quality assurance do not operate to limit the potential further wonderful opportunities that an truly international higher education environment offers.
No one country has a monopoly on knowledge and through international scholarship we begin to appreciate the essential elements to making a better world.
I hope Australia’s experience is of use to Malaysia. We have had our successes …. And made a few mistakes along the way. I am pleased to be able to share some of the successes – and mistakes – with you today.
I congratulate the Management and Science University for their vision in hosting the Leadership series of speeches. It makes a substantial contribution to the sharing of experience between Malaysia and the outside world.
Thank you.