Cheryl and jorge,
I don't think you seem to get it.

The education system is supposed to educate the public, who then work and produce something, and then pay tax, some of which goes back to run the education system.

The system should be self-sustaining, but should the public not produce enough to pay enough tax, then not enough money goes back to run the education system.

So the education system becomes overly expensive.

That is now the situation, whereby, the universities have to bring in money in the form of foregin students.

The situation cannot last forever, and eventually the education system has to educate the public, who then work and produce something, and then pay tax, some of which goes back to run the education system.

I also find the following rather repulsive "If they want to stay and become productive members of Australian society, I say: why not?"

We have 600,000 unemployed, but it appears that universities want to wipe those people off the slate, and simply bring in someone new.

The 600,000 unemployed actually represent a failure of the education system.

vanna,

I definitely agree that the education system educates people to work and thus pay taxes. The system, however, is not self-sufficient and with continuous intervention (for the worse) from successive governments on tertiary funding (universities, TAFEs etc) we only have our politicians to blame.

During the last day of this year's election campaign there was this report on the Coalition's proposed funding cuts:
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-election/society/fury-over-proposed-coalition-cuts-to-education-20100819-12s4w.html
To be fair, I don't think Labor has produced anything of worth either.

As for unemployment, I don't think it's a failure of the education system but more a failure in some sectors of the economy (the Global Financial Crisis we had is still not completely out of the way). Also, there are many people who change jobs or decide to end their current ones before securing a new position at a later date - this happens all the time. If you take international students out of the system the whole international education industry would collapse and we would have a whole lot more unemployed people around. What we should we looking at are the long-term unemployed who are in effect locked out of the jobs market.

How could we tackle the issue of long-term unemployment?
- Special training programs?
- Free tertiary education for the long term unemployed?
- Incentives for businesses to hire long-term unemployed workers?

I am not sure how many support systems are in place at the moment, but I hope our political representatives don't throw this issue into the too hard basket.

http://currentglobalperceptions.blogspot.com/

http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=11006#184051

Sorry Cheryl, Our welfare system has been designed by Uni "Academics" to keep people on welfare as long as possible. The number of "Social Workers" has been growing exponentially for 50 years now & everything is getting worse, not better.

What Australia desperately needs now is to purge our entire education system, Universities, TAFEs & Dept of Education Bureaucrookracy of Loony, Left, Humanities & Education Academics.

Baxter "Rehabilitation Resource" would be a great importunity for them to start digging a canal connecting Lake Eyre to Spencers Gulf with picks & shovels.

They might learn something about real work.

@ formersnag.
Read this:
http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=20743
Welfare Administration is indeed big business.

jorge, "If they want to stay and become productive members of Australian society, I say: why not?"

The "Why not?" is obvious: that is what the much criticised scams rely on, the bait of citizenship and bringing the 'relatives' in later. If education is good enough it should not have to rely on bait to attract buyers. The scams against students and the claims of violence and 'racism' directed at students have done tremendous harm to Australia's otherwise good standing in the international community and damaged our tourism as well.

In any event it should be a much better deal for the real students and for the educational institutions to provide the delivery of courses in India and other countries where the services are needed. Other countries are moving to do this and Australian tertiary educational institutions would be foolish not to follow their lead. Or do you think Australian universities are not good enough to pull the customers unless there is a substantial bait?

In fact, you might agree that because Australian universities are not ranked that highly through international comparison, a prize with every enrolment is probably needed. However it is only through competition that they will ever improve.

Cornflower, true. Scams used the promise of citizenship for their marketing.

I'm not saying there should be automatic permanent residence available to all graduates, but we also shouldn't completely eliminate the option. Having international students stay in Australia would allow the Australian economy to reap the benefits of having these new graduates in the workforce.

If I'm not mistaken the current regulations are that graduates from select professions/trades can stay in Australia more or less hassle free. But what about someone who has studied a different course? Just because their qualifications are not in demand shouldn't mean that they can't stay; perhaps they will find a different, almost unrelated job where their skills will serve them well. Not all domestic science graduates or accounting graduates work in their respective fields, yet I'm sure that they are all productive members of society.

As for Australian universities, several of them are in the top 100 in the world (depending on the ranking system). I consider our universities top class, but sadly a lot of the world does not - I have tried convincing some people that Australian universities are on par with European or American ones but some individuals refuse to even look at the evidence. The following gives a brief outline of Australian university rankings: http://www.australian-universities.com/rankings/
I think the Times Higher Education & QS rankings are now separate, so Australian university positions will fluctuate depending on the system. Here's a different system: http://www.arwu.org/ARWU2010.jsp

Either way, if international student enrolments drop, then the section of the Australian economy that relies on these students will also suffer. By all means we should be encouraging our universities and TAFEs to set up overseas campuses but we need to remember that we would be training overseas students who will benefit overseas economies with little immediate, direct benefit to Australia (I'm assuming local staff would be employed to handle the administration at these overseas campuses).

And competition is definitely good, but let's have a closer look at how the rest of the world funds their tertiary sector (I don't have any information readily available).

http://currentglobalperceptions.blogspot.com/