An interesting Twitter thread here on the subject of Chinese visa abusers students in an Australian university complaining about the subject material being taught.
This caught my attention for two reasons; firstly, it had never crossed my mind that, once reading the prospectus, applying and paying for the course, students would then vociferously petition to define the course material.
But the most instructive aspect of this is the reply by the University. Spoiler alert; it isn’t a single sentence along the lines of, “that’s what we’re teaching, if you don’t like it feel free to fuck off”:
To understand what’s going on with this story, you’ll need some specific Australian background. You can do your own research to confirm/reject these statements and, if you do, it’d be great to hear your conclusions in the comments:
Australia has been running two unofficial route to citizenship schemes for decades. The first is “457 visas” for IT workers where they are employed at lower than market rate until they achieve permanent resident status. In earlier times, this might have been called “indentured labour”. The second is a student visa whereby the children of rich foreigners with questionable qualifications and English language skills pay to attend a university course with the intention of staying long enough to achieve permanent resident status.
This has had the effect of keeping IT salaries lower than they might otherwise have been and inflating the revenue of the universities most guilty of turning a blind eye to non-bilingual students.
Following the events of 2020, these two industries are having to reassess this model.
Bill’s Opinion
The correct response from Monash should have been taciturn and Anglo Saxon. That it was a mealy mouthed equivocation tells us quite how reliant they are on the revenue being shipped in from mainland Chinese parents.
As the old axiom goes, “the customer is always right”.
I’m originally from the states but came here on a 457 visa 7 years ago. I have my undergraduate and master’s in accounting and was a CPA as well.
When i went to get my Permanent residency i had to pass a points test which involved passing an English test and proving that i was an accountant.
Easy right?
Nope – failed me on two English tests, I only passed when I called up to complain it was utter bollocks.
To prove i was an accountant i had to send my grades from uni, the classes i took, what was taught in those classes, my diploma, my cpa degree, and the grades i got on each part of the exam.
Easy right?
Nope – they told me I wasn’t even a BASIC accountant because I didnt have enough Business Law classes in Uni. Eventually they let me slide as I was a bloody CPA for 6 years before coming here.
Moral of the story – the Australian government isn’t interested in bringing in qualified people who want to be here (I’m a citizen now and love my country). They want to pump immigrants for as much money as humanly possible
Well, what you’re describing could also be explained by utter systemic incompetence in government departments. Not unheard of, to be fair.
Like the story I know well of a physio, qualified in South Africa and England who could only get registered in WA without retraining by applying to New Zealand and then transferring their new certificate to Victoria and then to WA.
But I agree with the general point; it’s a scheme to make money and bring in people. Neither of which I’m against in principle, just the recognition it sets weird incentives when we do so.
I still think a University will get close to filing for bankruptcy in Australia this year though. The students were fall less interested in the qualification but rather liked the soft route to PR.
Yea – and as much as i hated the runaround, I can appreciate why they did it. All comes down to supply and demand. Aussies have the supply and us filthy immigrants are demanding to get in!
I guess it all goes back to our heavy reliance on China for pretty much every aspect of our economy. From mining, to agriculture, to education I’m hard pressed to think of one sector that isn’t China centric. If they wanted to take out the education sector it wouldn’t be too hard.
Any upside to a University going under? I can think of probably 1,000 uni’s in the states that should go under. American schools are pretty much daycare for adults these days
Like the alternative thinker currently running around Oxford telling them that he didn’t come to England to study the English opus, he came to study his home continent’s opus.