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PART 1 - Students in the global market
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- International Student Security
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- 05 August 2012
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- 10 May 2010, pp 1-2
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13 - Family and friends
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- International Student Security
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- 10 May 2010, pp 324-364
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Family, that's your comfort zone. You have to build a whole new comfort zone, and you try to find where you are going to fit. You can't really keep on holding on to … I'm in Australia but I'm still very Malay, I do things the Malaysian way. Yes, you have to find that balance.
~ female, 21, computing, MalaysiaINTRODUCTION: NETWORKS, RELATIONSHIPS AND STUDENT SECURITY
The literature on social capital distinguishes bonding and bridging networks. ‘Bonding’ means ties of family, kin, locality, friends like oneself and ethnic or fraternal organisations. It tends to exclude outsiders. ‘Bridging’ ties are more open and inclusive. They bring people together with others different from themselves. Educational institutions can facilitate horizontal bridging between people of different classes, localities, cultural backgrounds and nations.
Both forms of association contribute to international student security. Weiss argues that ‘different types of relationship make different provisions’. People have varying needs and multiple linkages and networks. He nominates six kinds of provision: ‘attachment, social integration, reliable alliance, guidance, reassurance of worth and opportunity for nurturance’. No relationship fulfils all needs, though intimate relations with a partner may fulfil several of them. Weiss distinguishes ‘social loneliness’ triggered by desires for social integration, attachment and alliance, from ‘emotional loneliness’. In a study of university students DiTommaso and Spinner confirm the categories of social and emotional loneliness and, within emotional loneliness, distinguish between family loneliness and romantic loneliness.
Frontmatter
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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1 - The students
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- International Student Security
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- 10 May 2010, pp 3-23
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There's hell a lot of differences between living there and living here. The advantage of living out here is it teaches you how to be independent, the survival of the fittest. How to do things, manage your entire life. Back home, you have your parents to support you, back up. Out here, there is no back up; you're on your own. There are crucial decisions, and the decisions have to be taken by you, not by your parents. You learn a lot.
~ male, 27, business, IndiaINTRODUCTION: HAPPY DAYS
It is early December in Melbourne, Australia, and a pleasant 24°C. Summer has just begun. Those hot dry north winds that make life difficult in southern Australia and drive everyone to the beach, are still weeks away. We are on a large university campus where people are gathering for the graduation ceremony. The string quartet is tuning up to welcome them. The baroque musicians would be out of place in other student settings but today they seem to be exactly right, hinting at something special, at that reservoir of ineffable culture, the mediaeval mystery of deep learning, that the university represents. Graduation is about rites of passage and the journey into work and profession, about long years of investment of family money and economic benefits received, but it is also about something scholastic and timeless and the ceremony will reflect that. Altogether 415 students today will be invested as bachelors, masters and doctoral degree holders. Among the students and their families entering the university hall are many Asian faces.
9 - Safety of the person
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- 10 May 2010, pp 204-240
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So if the prime motive is education, go to the US. If the motive is immigration, come to Australia. And the quality of life is as good as anywhere else. And it's safer than any other country.
~ male, 23 years, computing, IndiaINTRODUCTION: THE LOGIC OF DENIAL
In 2006, just after the main body of interviews for this study were conducted, Australian Education International conducted a survey of international students in Australia, including 3585 who were enrolled in the final year of programs in higher education. Respondents were asked to order the importance of factors affecting their decision to study in Australia. Among higher education students the most important reason for coming to Australia was that it was an English-speaking country, which was nominated by 90 per cent. The second most important reason was that Australia was ‘safe and secure’, or ‘a safe place to live’, which were nominated by 87 per cent. These two reasons ranked ahead of other considerations, such as the quality of education and the opportunity to experience a new culture and lifestyle. Among students from Indonesia (94 per cent), India (93 per cent) and Singapore and Malaysia (91 per cent), safety and security were the most important reasons for choosing Australia. It ranked highly among students from all other national groupings, including those from China and Hong Kong China (90 per cent).
5 - Finances
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- 10 May 2010, pp 89-113
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It costs money to live here in Australia. Having a budget is very important, and keeping to budget and living within one's means. Living within your means is the safest thing to do here, because if you run out of money I don't know where you can get help. If I ran out of money at home I would go to the village and it's alright. The neighbours would come with a bowl of food for me to eat. I wouldn't be hungry.
~ female, 40, PhD gender studies, Papua New GuineaINTRODUCTION: ‘IF YOU PRICK US, DO WE NOT BLEED?’
In February 2007 the Australian Vice-Chancellor's Committee (AVCC) reported the findings of a national study titled Australian University Student Finances 2006. The objective was to clarify the ‘financial situation of Australian students’. The reader might assume the report was focused on students enrolled at Australian universities. But this was only partly true. The international students who constituted 25 per cent of students in Australian universities were excluded. The questionnaire used for the study stated that ‘This survey is only for domestic students, if you are an international student please do not complete the survey’. Professor Glen Withers of Universities Australia (UA), the rebadged AVCC, defended the exclusion of international students by stating the project was focused on improving income support for domestic students.
3 - The global student market
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- 10 May 2010, pp 36-52
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Everything is painted so rosy when they are marketing.
~ female, 29, PhD in education, IndiaINTRODUCTION: STUDENTS ON THE MOVE
In 2006, 2.9 million tertiary students enrolled outside their countries of citizenship, almost five times the 0.6 million in 1975. Since 2000 foreign tertiary students have increased at 7.5 per cent per annum, twice the rate of increase of tertiary students as a whole. Tertiary campuses are ‘more cosmopolitan thereby intensifying the intercultural aspect of internationalisation at home in host countries’, says the OECD, though the effects are uneven across the world. Australia has seen very rapid growth of international students coupled with modest growth in local students, an extreme version of the overall pattern. The degree of intercultural education is less clear.
This chapter describes the patterns of global student mobility, including the expanding commercial market in foreign degrees, with some focus on Australia.
ROOTS OF GLOBAL MOBILITY
Cross-border mobility has roots in globalisation, policy and market forces:
During the early years, public policies aimed at promoting and nurturing academic, cultural, social and political ties between countries played a key role, especially in the context of the European construction in which building mutual understanding between young Europeans was a major policy objective. Similar rationales motivated North American policies of academic co-operation. Over time, however, driving factors of a more economic nature played an increasing role. Indeed, decreasing transportation costs, the spread of new technologies, and faster, cheaper communication resulted in a growing interdependence of economies and societies in the 1980s and even more so in the 1990s. This tendency was particularly strong in the high technology sector and labour market. […]
16 - Final thoughts
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- International Student Security
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- 10 May 2010, pp 447-466
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There's no point in coming here if the government is not helping international students. They are charging us double the amount they are charging Australian students … If they are charging us more, then they should give us something for that. They should give attention to our problems.
~ male, 22, business, IndiaINTRODUCTION: INSECURITY IN THE MARKETPLACE
Though the sanitised report of the Victorian taskforce on international students largely sidestepped the safety issue (chapter 9), six months after its publication the state government had still not responded. Politicians and police still denied racism was an issue. But it was too late. Either the bashings of south Asian students were more frequent or reported more often, which, in policy terms, was the same. By late May 2009 each attack was front page news in Australia, India and around the world.
On Saturday, 23 May 2009, at a party in Melbourne's north four Indian students were attacked with a screwdriver by gatecrashers shouting racist epithets. One student was treated in intensive care. A witness to the assault said, ‘We are not safe in this country. They are taking so many fees and taxes from international students, but they are not protecting us'.On 25 May another Indian student was stabbed while walking home. The Chief executive of Universities Australia, which represents the vice-chancellors, said, ‘We are certainly worried about the impression this may create among potential students and their parents’. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said, ‘Australia takes very seriously its reputation as a safe destination for Indian Students’.
4 - Student security and regulation
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- International Student Security
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- 10 May 2010, pp 53-80
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We're basically seen as cash cows and that's something that should change.
~ male, 33, PhD in medicine, SpainINTRODUCTION: STUDENTS CHANGING THEMSELVES
Human beings are complex creatures. Amartya Sen points out that ‘We all have multiple identities, and … each of these identities can yield concerns and demands that can significantly supplement, or seriously compete with, other concerns and demands arising from other identities’. Each person must navigate these multiple identities. For those who cross borders the complexities and tensions are greater. The transitional character of the study experience, and the large communities in which it plays out, opens all international students to changing associations and new kinds of self, rendering their human security more chancy and unstable.
As Pedersen puts it, ‘the multicultural person is always recreating an identity as roles are learned, modified or discarded in each discontinuous situation’. While not many international students change their basic values, objectives or commitment to their country, most tend to adopt attitudes ‘favouring greater open-mindedness, the value of knowledge, and greater freedom in the relationship between sexes’. This response is almost inevitable. It is difficult to accommodate the new environment without becoming more flexible.
14 - Loneliness
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- International Student Security
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- 10 May 2010, pp 365-391
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I think the biggest problems most international students face is that of loneliness, and I mean it really gets to the point of depression. Some of the people I know that I've met, it's really … they don't know what to do, they don't know who to go to, because they have come from countries where it is not acceptable to go and ask for help. You have to do it yourself.
~ male, 29, business, IndiaINTRODUCTION: THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG-DISTANCE STUDENT
Not all international students are secured all the time by bonding relations. Often networks with family and friends are attenuated by distance or by cultural displacement just when they are most needed. For others traditional bonds do not meet all their needs for sociability. Many experience loneliness during their stay. For some loneliness becomes a permanent condition that constrains their agency.
A person is lonely when the need to belong is unsatisfied. As with feelings of hunger, joy and sorrow, loneliness is a human condition that almost everyone has known. Feelings of loneliness cannot be wholly eliminated but they can be modified through the actions of the agent and/or others. Loneliness is more likely to occur under circumstances such as prolonged foreign travel or the loss of significant others. It is one of the defining features of the international student experience.
2 - The setting: Australia
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- International Student Security
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- 10 May 2010, pp 24-35
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I've heard patients say stuff to me, but nothing in a racist sort of way. More like ‘Don't Asians have blue eyes?’ A woman actually asked me that. Like, what planet are you from? (laughs) Blue eyes! …. So yeah, I do get some remarks that make you stand out. People have preconceptions when they see me. And they immediately stereotype … often white people are surprised when I open my mouth and start speaking English to them. They can't believe I can speak English. And I say to them, do you believe I just got here six months ago (laughs) … I think I'm more Australian than some Australians.
~ female, 26, medicine, MalaysiaINTRODUCTION: THE NATIONAL FACTOR
International students in Australia have similar experiences to their counterparts in other English-speaking countries — the USA, the UK, New Zealand and Canada — especially those who are non-white students from countries where English is a foreign language. This will show in the research literature and the interview findings in parts 2 and 3. All non-citizen students who cross borders for study face common issues and problems, including those who go to China, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and India. For students crossing borders within the European Higher Education Area the experience is not as foreign as it once was. Nevertheless all students away from home, studying in unfamiliar institutions and daily using a new language, face challenges, the more so if they arrange their own accommodation and must work part time to survive.
10 - The immigration department
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- 10 May 2010, pp 241-262
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Dealing with immigration is pretty hard. Extending a visa, it was a big process. It's not easy. You go to the counter there and pick up this ticket number and you have to wait for ages. And people there are not friendly. They never smile, as if we are thieves or have a criminal offence. You go there, you're really tense and nervous. You can't be yourself.
~ male, 27, computing, Sri LankaINTRODUCTION: THE ALIENS HAVE LANDED
The relationship between mobile non-citizen students and the nation-state in the country of education is inherently ambiguous and problematic.
We live in a zero sum world in which each nation claims sovereignty over a parcel of territory and each fosters a citizenry, people inherited and chosen, towards whom it exercises jurisdiction and responsibility. Each polices borders that are not just geographic but also imagined boundaries vectored by law, politics and culture. So where do resident non-citizens fit? As discussed in chapter 4 international students have left their nation of citizenship but have not become full members of the nation of education. While the original nation can be reached via communications and the diplomatic mission, those ties have thinned. That nation no longer nurtures and regulates them in a day to day sense. But there is no global state mapped on the growing population of the globally mobile. In a real sense international students find themselves in limbo, people without a state.
12 - Language
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- 10 May 2010, pp 294-323
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There's a tutor, she was about to fail my first assignment which I thought I had done perfectly. She was so awful. When I walked into her office, the very first thing she said, ‘You are an international student, right? So does this happen to you often, has it happen to you before?’ She assumed that English is my problem and it had been happening since I started university … Yes, I'm an international student, but I don't deserve the description of someone who is more likely to fail.
~ female, 23, social work, TaiwanINTRODUCTION: LANGUAGE AND STUDENT SECURITY
Language shapes our mentalities and makes communication and association possible. For international students, cross-border mobility is mobility from one zone of social communication to another. Language fluency not only affects ease of mobility, but in some respects it also determines whether mobility takes place. Students’ capacity in the language of the country of education governs academic success, as well as with whom students talk and the nature of their day-to-day life. Language capacity also determines whether students can deal with problems and emergencies on their own behalf. Communication is essential to survival and security in almost all situations.
If there is one theme that stands out in the research literature on international education in English-speaking nations, it is that of international students’ language-related difficulties, which can be particularly severe for students from countries where English is learnt as a foreign language, being at best a medium of instruction in the classroom and sometimes merely a subject of study, rather than a language of daily interaction.
Contents
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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Index
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- 10 May 2010, pp 501-514
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PART 2 - Security in the formal and public domain
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- 10 May 2010, pp 81-88
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INTRODUCTION TO PART 2: THE FORMAL AND PUBLIC DOMAIN
The formal and public domain of international student security in Australia is constituted by the ESOS Act, which defines in a particular way the relationship between nation-state, institutional providers and the student consumer. It is also shaped by the conditions governing student visas; and affected by higher education policy and funding, and processes of accreditation and quality assurance (not discussed in detail here).
The branch of government with specific policy responsibility is Australian Education International (AEI), located in the federal Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR). AEI promotes the industry, though individual institutions also carry out their own marketing. It administers the ESOS Act and its website is the main official source of information. For the most part AEI relates to students indirectly via educational providers. The National Code of Practice for Registration Authorities and Providers of Education and Training to Overseas Students is addressed to providers, not students. Government at a distance means state authority is curiously diffuse. On most matters the students have little recourse to direct demands, confrontation or even questions of government. As much as possible questions of standards and quality are transferred down to their dealings with providers. This is consistent with the principles of subsidiary (devolution to the level closest to the actual service) and academic autonomy, but there is no mechanism of appeal beyond the provider. Nor in most areas are there solid standards by which AEI can be held to account.
6 - Work
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- 10 May 2010, pp 114-144
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In my first two years I had to work a lot to support myself, 30-40 hours of work per week, and I was also trying to achieve high marks in my studies.
~ male, 27, India, music therapyINTRODUCTION: ‘ALL THIS FOR $8 AN HOUR’
‘Assault, abuse, fare evasion, 12-hour shifts, poor security. All this for $8 an hour.’ So ran the quote that was highlighted on the front of the May Day 2008 edition of the Age. The main city intersection in front of the clocks at Flinders Street station had been occupied for 22 hours by hundreds of taxi drivers paying respect to a fellow driver who had been stabbed and abandoned by a passenger. The drivers demanded the state government compel taxi owners to fit driver safety shields that would offer some protection from assaults. As was the 23 year old victim, many of the protesters were among the estimated 5000 Indian students working in Melbourne as part-time cabbies to generate the income needed to live and study in Australia. Though it was cold, the young men stripped to the waist and threatened to parade totally naked through the streets to highlight the physical vulnerability of those who labour in a lowly paid occupation in which workers must provide for their own occupational health and safety insurance. According to the Victorian Taxi Directorate this is a dangerous occupation, requiring drivers to ‘work alone, work at night, work long shifts increasing the risk of fatigue, work in isolated and high-crime areas, have cash on hand and always deal with strangers’.
7 - Housing
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- 10 May 2010, pp 145-173
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It [was] a one bedroom unit. They lived in the living room, I lived in the bedroom. So inconvenient. He was always there. I cannot get out. I just stayed in my room. That's why I moved. I moved to the other place to the house of my classmate's brother, from Beijing. There were so many people, mum and dad, his wife, him and the baby, and other students. One toilet. So I have to line up, not convenient … cooking was always a problem, so many people wanted to cook. I have to line up and wait.
~ female, 33, education, ChinaINTRODUCTION: ‘FALLING WELL SHORT OF OUR DUTY OF CARE’
On 3 January 2008, fire swept through a small house located in busy Ballarat Road in the Melbourne suburb of Footscray, walking distance from the core campus of Victoria University where more than 5500 international students were enrolled. Sleeping in a front bedroom of the house were three students from India: Deepak Kumar Prajapati aged 24, Jigneshkumar Ghanshyandas Sadhu, 32 and Sunil Ramanlal Patel, 24. All three perished. ‘We had already heard from callers to 000 [the emergency phone line] that there were people inside and the first crews tried to get in but there was no way they could get to anyone. It was a wall of flame’, said Trevor Woodward, a spokesperson for the fire brigade. ‘We got the front door open and there was a bloke in the middle of the passage way rolling around, but we couldn't help him’, said a neighbour. ‘The flames were on both sides of the wall.’ Three other people escaped unharmed.
About the authors
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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- 10 May 2010, pp ix-x
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11 - The universities
- Simon Marginson, University of Melbourne, Chris Nyland, Monash University, Victoria, Erlenawati Sawir, Central Queensland University, Helen Forbes-Mewett, La Trobe University, Victoria
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When you first come here, you have no idea what to do. You end up like finding out about the whole university because they throw you from one place to the other.
~ male, 28, science, IndonesiaINTRODUCTION: THE CONSUMER AS SUPPLICANT
‘Do but despise understanding and science, which are the highest of all human gifts, and you have surrendered yourself to the devil and must surely perish.’
So says Goethe in Mephistopheles. And, as websites of universities around the world tell us, those who desire ‘understanding and science’ must enrol at a university.
Those same university websites also describe their institutions as the path to individual enrichment and prosperity. That message might be more potent. After all it is Accounting and not Aristotle that puts bread on the table. But universities are very large and only intermittently friendly. It is not very easy to access scientific knowledge and professional careers in a foreign university in a strange country.
International students have three sets of relations with the university: with administrative processes, with academic staff and with student services. As the evidence below will show the harder moments are mostly with administration. Relations with services are more positive than negative. Academic experiences are mixed, but fraught because much is at stake. Often internal university dealings are mediated by an international student office, especially in the crucial early weeks.