David Llewellyn Smith really cuts to the chase with his recent critique of the international Student marketing scam that is devastating the accommodation situation for Aussies, leading to an epidemic of hunger and homelessness, not seen in this country since the Great Depression. Even the small token number of reforms to reduce to a tiny degree the scam activities of education manipulators, has led to 2,000 or so jobs being lost from the sector, with a glorious 6,000 more to come in the next six months, and while I normally am saddened about Aussies losing jobs, I have no sympathy for anyone related to the evil universities, even the janitors.
As part of Albo's Great White Replacement program, he signed with India the Mechanism for Mutual Recognition of Qualifications, which insanely gave legal validity to all Indian degrees relative to Australian ones, instantly making Australia, Third World; the Indian agreement was typed on a typewriter, with punch holes, not even a computer (see link below). There has been the rise of private "ghost colleges" providing bogus qualifications to foreign students, particularly Indians. Most of these colleges are empty, as Indians are just paying for a work visa to take Aussie jobs.
"Why have we made ourselves into the global scam education epicentre for 1.4 billion impoverished subcontinentals, delivering the wrong skills, smashed services, a generational housing shock, endemic inflation, and weak incomes to annihilate living standards? Let international education burn!" Indeed, a fate that it richly deserves!
The time is long overdue for passive Aussies to fight back against the shameful degradation they have received. Is there any pride, let alone intestinal fortitude left?
Start with organized, legal rallies outside of the major city universities. Demand the resignation of the vice chancellors, and massive salary reductions for all other bludgers. Then lobby for the universities to be taxed. The time of their parasitic sucking on the public must come to an end! What is One nation doing about this? It was academics who hounded Hanson in the 1990s; surely, she would be interested in a bit of justice?
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/06/let-international-education-burn/
"Let international education burnAbout 2000 jobs have already been lost in the international education sector as universities, private colleges and recruitment firms manage the fallout from government reforms to cut foreign student enrolments.
Job losses will escalate, and another 6000 workers could be forced out of the sector in the next six months as the policies bite and force colleges to close, says Troy Williams, chief executive of the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia.
"My guess is the floodgates will open in the second half of this year. We expect around 300 colleges won't survive."
Nor should they. These "colleges" are nothing but scam centres born out of Albo's insane Indian labour market deals.
Let's recall what the PM of "Australia" did in early 2023.
He signed the Mechanism for Mutual Recognition of Qualifications which equalised the legal validity of all Indian degrees versus their Australian equivalents.
Take a look at the document. It was clearly drafted by the Indian side on some ancient typewriter, punch holes intact!
This agreement pulled the finger from the dike for Indian student scamming. Bloomberg reported at the time:
Business is booming in India's $117 billion education industry and new colleges are popping up at breakneck speed. Yet thousands of young Indians are finding themselves graduating with limited or no skills, undercutting the economy at a pivotal moment of growth.
Desperate to get ahead, some of these young people are paying for two or three degrees in the hopes of finally landing a job. They are drawn to colleges popping up inside small apartment buildings or inside shops in marketplaces. Highways are lined with billboards for institutions promising job placements.
…The problems at colleges extend across the country, with a string of institutions in various states drawing official scrutiny. In some parts of India, students have gone on hunger strikes protesting the lack of teachers and facilities at their institutes. In January, charges were filed against Himachal Pradesh-based Manav Bharti University and its promoters for allegedly selling fake degrees, according to a press release from the Directorate of Enforcement. Manav Bharti University didn't respond to request for comment.
…Anil Swarup, a former secretary for school education estimated in a 2018 article that of 16,000 colleges handing out bachelor's qualifications for teachers, a large number existed only in name.
This is what Albo imported to Australia.
In 2019, reports emerged about private 'ghost colleges' providing bogus qualifications to international students, particularly Indians.
"Indian students are being exploited to the hilt.. out of which a large proportion was from Punjab", Chandigarh-based education agent Avtar Gill told SBS.
In May last year, a parliamentary inquiry heard evidence of private vocational education and training (VET) providers working with unregulated education agents to steal foreign students from prestigious universities for large commissions, to sell work visas, and to build "ghost colleges" where students do not attend classes but are awarded degrees.
Then in August last year, The Age reported that these 'ghost colleges' were poaching thousands of international students:
"On paper, this burgeoning industry is providing tens of thousands of international students with an education – particularly students from India and Nepal. In reality, many of the colleges are near deserted", said University of Sydney academic Salvatore Babones.
"They are not genuinely studying. They are simply overpaying for a work visa".
Albo's unqualified army of unemployable Indians has since added massively to the homeless and hungry charity queue, driven rents crazy, crush-loaded hospitals, added to congestion, and destroyed wage growth.
Why have we made ourselves into the global scam education epicentre for 1.4 billion impoverished subcontinentals, delivering the wrong skills, smashed services, a generational housing shock, endemic inflation, and weak incomes to annihilate living standards?
Let international education burn!"
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/06/international-student-rorters-must-face-annihilation/
"Education Minister Jason Clare has confirmed that the federal government will specify limits on international enrolments at each of Australia's 42 universities and potentially more than 1,000 vocational colleges.
Clare stated that he expected the caps to be calculated over the next three months, with an emphasis on limits at the institutional rather than course level. Course caps would be considered a "reserve power".
Clare stated that the government was responding to universities' concerns about the uneven impact of its student visa limits.
Integrity procedures that had "ramped up" in recent months have resulted in more international students at some universities and "a lot less" at others.
"A lot of universities have asked for this", Clare said. "In particular, the smaller universities have said to me, 'We'd prefer a different system where you set a level or a cap for us each and every year,' and that's what this legislation does".
Clare also admitted that international education was "pretty much an unregulated sector". While domestic enrolments were "effectively" capped by funding for university places, "it doesn't work like that for international students at the moment", he said.
"There's a certain logic and common sense…that if we regulate the number of Australian students, we should do that also for international students".
Mark Scott, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney and Group of Eight Chair, attacked Labor's student visa caps.
The University of Sydney has the highest concentration of international enrolments in Australia, comprising 57% of postgraduate enrolments and 46% of overall enrolments.
Hilariously, Jason Clare's confirmation of international education caps comes as thousands of international students have been accused of cheating and paying others to do their work, with the University of Sydney impacted most heavily.
"The large-scale return of international students has reignited fears of a cheating black market linked to visa fraud, while forensic IT advances have helped investigators find more cheating students", The SMH reported.
"The University of Sydney recorded a 1000% increase in serious academic cheating in two years".
Associate Professor at Sydney University, Salvatore Babones, gave a more rational assessment of the situation in his book, "Australia's Universities, Can They Reform":
"Too often, and for too long, Australian governments have enabled university behaviours that broadly disserve Australia's students and effectively defraud Australia's taxpayers", Babones wrote.
"Governments headed by both major parties have allowed (and even encouraged) universities to expand international student enrolments beyond all sound pedagogical limits"…
"They have applauded the universities' international rankings success, despite its being achieved at the cost of degraded educational experiences for domestic students"…
"Instead of enabling the self interested behaviour of Australian universities, cutting a bit here and intervening a bit there, it should insist that universities deliver—first and foremost—a quality education for Australian domestic students"…
"Over the last two decades, many of Australia's public universities have acted irresponsibly—in their bloated international student recruitment programs, in their unbridled pursuit of international rankings, in their don't ask, don't tell approach to Chinese influence, and in their outright exploitation of domestic students", Babones wrote.
Babones elaborated on these concerns last month, noting that Australian universities' concentrations of international students have reached truly absurd levels, which has degraded the educational experience for local students:
"Exploitation is running entire onshore courses specifically for international students, often as the price they must pay to access Australia's low-wage labour market for convenience store clerks and Uber Eats drivers"
"When I arrived in 2008, Australia already had the most internationalized university system in the world. There had been a ten-year run-up in international student numbers to globally unprecedented levels. But things were only about to kick into high gear".
"Since 2008, the number of international students at Australia's public universities has doubled. In 2022 (the latest year for which data are available) Australian public universities were 30% international by student load. The numbers were 24% for undergraduate students and 48% for postgraduate students".
"To put these numbers into perspective the single most internationalized public university in the entire United States (the University of Illinois) is only 23% international".
"That's right: the Australian system as a whole is more international than the most international public universities in America".
Salvatore Babones, therefore, recommended in his book that caps be placed on international student numbers of 20% per course, 15% per university, and 10% from any one country.
We should also remember that Australia's universities are non-profit entities that do not pay taxes (unlike other 'export' sectors). This is despite our universities acting like corporatised, profit-maximizing enterprises, with senior leadership groups earning excessive salaries.
Under this system, universities, rather than taxpayers, are 'clipping the ticket' and earning gigantic economic rents from Australia's immigration system via student fees.
As a result, universities are privatising the benefits of record immigration while Australians—particularly renters—are socialising the costs.
Ultimately, Australia's public educational institutions should exist to serve the needs of Australian students, not international students. The learning experience of local students must be paramount.
The government must also shut down the hundreds of dodgy private colleges that have mushroomed to exploit the student visa system for work rights and residency."