The sooner, & the greater the downsizing of our university sector, the better.

The ridiculous growth in the sector, to take advantage of foreign students has been to the detriment of local students, not to their advantage.

All this expansion has been to advantage the management, & staff of the institutions, definitely not to advantage the student base.

Any market has just so many competent players. Double the number of AFL teams, & you lower the standard of the players. Demand by the continually expanding higher education sector long ago exceeded the available talent. Standards in all but a few schools are now so low that even our subcontinent customers are well advised to look elsewhere.

Our home grown students can only benefit by a 50% shrinking of the sector, & a major reduction in make believe courses. Perhaps then we will have less graduates driving taxis, or handing us our "fries".

The international students thing has been nothing more than a backdoor immigration scam. This only benefits the overseas students and the college management.

The unis were built with taxpayers finds and should be for Aussie students, with some invited students from close neighbours, such as Pacific Islands and PNG.

If countries like china, India and Pakistan can muck around with nuclear weapons they can surely educate their own.

Lots of overseas students also affect the the rental housing market, denying Aussie families the opportunity to rent at a fair rate.

Sooner the numbers of overseas students stop coming the better.

Firstly , I see the International Students in two completely different catagories.

I. The sham Colleges.. ie. Hairdressing and Cooking Colleges. One gets the feeling that this is where the backdoor immigration scams are coming from, in the main.

Solution, get rid of them by not allwing any residential qualifications to be attached to their " products " or " graduates"..( ever see an Indian Hairdresser incidentally ? )

2 Universities.

Are we really making money from these, as a whole. Do the fees cover the actual costs AND deliver a profit. It's a concept that I suspect the average University would have a problem understanding. So ,if not then, why should we go looking for this type of student growth?

Finally, are thse students actually harming the Australian Economy, particularly the #1s, by being here and having Australian Jobs, to the detriment of other Job Seekers? I particularly refer to Taxi Industry, once heavily populated by older Australian, now no longer wanted in this Industry as drivers.

Overall, I would prefer to see smaller , better Universities, no sham Colleges and a controlled Immigration System.

Is this too much to ask for ?

meh, we'll survive without overseas students.

Universities may even be forced to go back to providing core subjects. There's too much fluff. I think it would be a good thing to reduce numbers, reduce superfluous subjects that should be handled by TAFE, and bring back some prestige to a university degree.

There's too many people at UNI who don't need to be there and who aren't really smart enough anyway.

The effect of overseas students and the money they provide has created an expectation that every local kid has some inalienable right to go to university even if he's as dumb as...

david jennings - yes I know Dilan was born in Australia - your point is?

Did you read the article it starts out with "If you were a parent sitting in an Asian country" .. now read my post in that context, it is addressing the "parents in an Asian country" so go and attack someone else OK?

And yes, I've spent considerable time in many overseas universities - none of them in Europe, or USA have the incredible amount of overseas students to the point of creating curricula just for that business.

Have you been overseas and seen unis and what they do? Again, go attack someone else

"why is it surprising that the two countries with the world's largest populations" because they know they can buy into countries like ours and not have to worry about building an education system we're stupid enough to pander to it instead of building infrastructure.

"Birrell's idea of getting rid of the foreign students and educating only Australian students is facile wishful thinking." no it is not, you are wrong.

Australia does seem to be already well above its quota.

Australia has about 6 times more foregin studentsd per head of population than the US.

The "industry" of educating foregin students does appear a very fickle industry, and the idea that it is an "export" industry does appear to be some type of "creative accounting"

The $17 billion (or in this article $18 billion) so called export industry is based on what foregin students spend while in the country.

If a student gets a job in Australia and spends the money they earn, that is classed as an export industry by universities.

If a student spends their money on an import (eg buys an imported car) that is also classed as an export industry by universities.

Australian universities are also not that great. On this list of the world;s top universities, the highest Australian university comes in at 91.

http://www.4icu.org/

I think Australian universities may have to stop calling themselves centers for higher learning and start calling themselves centers for ripping people off, while hood-winking the public.