Make the Universities Pay, Hard! By James Reed
According to the Australian Department of Home Affairs, there were 713,144 foreign students in Australia at the end of February 2024, and with university terms in full swing, probably a lot more now. The universities are pulling in $ 9 billion in tuition fees, but are failing to provide housing, only meeting 20 percent of the demand. Hence a massive accommodation crisis. But it is not just Aussies who suffer, some landlords are requiring sexual services from female students to secure some accommodation. Welcome to the Third World.
This education supermarket madness has to stop, as the supposed $ 26 billion is only a short-term gain, at the cost of deskilling the country, as the immigration Ponzi scheme does. In any case universities have now defined themselves as corporations and must be treated as such, losing their "charity" tax-exempt status. And they need to accommodate every international student that they bring in through the system.
Opposing the universities is the big battle that Australia needs to wake up to.
https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/04/labor-confronts-international-student-tsunami/
"Australia's biggest universities are failing to provide 80 per cent of their foreign students with guaranteed housing, despite taking in $9bn a year in tuition fees.
Universities have built enough dorm rooms to accommodate only 40,000 students nationally – a fraction of the 205,000 international students they have enrolled to study in Australia this year, while private training colleges have failed to provide any accommodation, even though they have accepted 149,000 foreign students this year.
The failure of the $26bn international education industry to provide accommodation has meant at least 400,000 international students have been forced into a private rental market with the tightest vacancy rates on record.
Sydney University will educate 32,800 international students on campus this year as enrolments bounce back from the pandemic trough, but it provides only enough accommodation for 2936 students – despite receiving $1.4bn from foreign student tuition fees in 2022.
In a statement, Sydney University said it had spent $220m building affordable student accommodation since 2015 and planned to offer up to 3000 more beds in the next five years, subject to approvals and land availability.
The university is lobbying the NSW government to reclassify university-run dormitories as "affordable housing'', with exemptions to planning and density rules, and relief from developer contributions."
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