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What will follow the international student boom? Future directions for Australian higher education Angel Calderon RMIT University
This paper highlights some of the challenges being faced by Australian higher education which are likely to have an impact over the next ten years and beyond and opportunities to deal with them. In doing so, the policy settings from the Dawkins reforms in the late 1980s to the present which have shaped the higher education landscape are described, bringing into perspective the operating context for Australian universities. Two key themes are discussed: universities’ reliance on international students, and demographic shifts. The discussion that follows is how these drivers are likely to shape demand for higher education and what impact these will have on universities over the next ten years. Keywords: higher education, public policy, Australia, students, demographic shifts, international education, planning and foresight.
Introduction Over the past 30 years, Australia has trialled a series of educational reforms, courting fee deregulation, marketisation and liberalisation. These policy changes have been key drivers in the success of Australia’s higher education sector, enabling many of its institutions to ‘punch above their weight’ globally as measured by various global ranking schemas. But it has also created economic dependencies that makes Australian institutions vulnerable more than ever to political international fluctuations.
Higher education reforms: a potted history The success of Australia’s higher education, as measured by the income generated from international students in fees and charges, has rested on policy reforms which started in the late 1980s under the leadership of the then federal education minister John Dawkins. Following the release of a discussion
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paper in December 1987 (Dawkins, 1987), the government’s perspective on the future direction of higher remained unchanged when the White Paper was released in July 1988 (Meek, 1991). The implementation of these policies resulted in the amalgamation of institutions (from 19 universities and 73 other higher education institutions in 1987 to 38 institutions in 1991) and brought in a unified national system; an increase in the number of publicly-funded places available for study, and a new funding model on discipline and level of study, among many other changes. The main argument for undertaking successive public policy reforms was that Australia needed to be more competitive internationally. As Meek (1991) observes, Australia’s massive overseas deficit is mentioned as a motivating factor for many of the Hawke Labor Government’s policies. These reforms, which went through during the 1990s and 2000s, delivered unprecedented economic stability and growth. They were influenced by the neoliberal forces that prevailed at that time. Many governments around
What will follow the international student boom? Angel Calderon
vol. 62, no. 1, 2020
