STUDENTS & SOCIETY
POLICY & LOBBYING
When international students 'go home' Australia loses more than just money There’s a real tendency to speak of international students as sources of income by the Government and university leadership. As university funding has been continuously cut by governments over the years – both Liberal and Labor – universities have become incredibly reliant on international students paying high fees choosing to study at their universities in order to boost operating budgets.
Some of them had made it into Australia prior to the borders closing, only to be stranded in lockdown, their casual jobs gone and their families back home unable to assist...
This outlook has gone hand-in-hand with an increasingly neoliberal push on campus, with universities pushed to become more like businesses than institutions of knowledge and, most recently, the passing of the JobReady Graduates legislation proving that the Government only values learning geared towards individuals becoming units of production they approve of following graduation. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the international student market has collapsed and in more ways than one, universities are going to be poorer for this in 2021. Yet, I want to put all that aside and speak personally about international students in a way which does not revolve around finances.
Celeste Liddle National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Organiser
8
Sentry
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DECEMBER 2020
I have completed a Masters this year and 2020 has been an incredibly difficult year to undertake studies. The isolation of studying from a lounge room, separated from my classmates, lecturers and tutors, yet trying to form some sort of collegiality as we worked through the course materials was rough. But what I was going through was nothing compared to some of my classmates. A very high proportion of the cohort I was in were international students and they were having an incredibly hard time. Some of them had made it into Australia prior to the borders closing, only to be stranded in lockdown, their casual jobs gone and their families back home unable to assist because they were in the same
