I wonder if foreign student education is like coal exports with income now and costs later. In part it is a form of back door immigration with I believe one in four students becoming residents. Does that mean cuts to other forms of immigration or does it add to it? If so our immigration policy is not well managed.

In the case of Hobart the look of CBD has changed with UTas building on prime waterfront, taking over a hotel and a large hardware store. It's as if foreign student education is the new gold rush. It's more intrusive than in other established cities and to me it seems unbalanced. Some sort of correction could be looming.

How do students with insufficient English skills gain degrees in an English-speaking only country?

Why bother with the existing effort in attempting to rationalise academic sales?
Why not dispense with universities altogether, and simply offer prestigiously printed degrees to any applicant with the appropriately high amount of money?
After all, what is the value of a currently compromised degree?

Your take Binroy, if true/accurate? Is what invariably occurs when publically funded institution are partly or wholly privatised. We once had universities which proudly stood with the best as places of excellence. Now, are just institutional whores tarting for business? If you are to be believed, Binroy?
Alan B.

Hiya Binoy

The term "Asian students" is a bit broad. I think you're mainly talking about students from the Chinese mainland.

This is given Indian, Pakistani and Singaporean students speak English well as a second language and sometimes equal first language.

I'm a little worried your days of continued employment at RMIT Uni are numbered. Excess of franktitude in paragraph one?:

"...the over-remunerated Vice Chancellors and their various henchpersons...Standards have been cooked, if not waived altogether, on the issue of English proficiency. Student bodies are the university equivalent of lebensraum: the expansive steppes of the Asian student market, to be exploited and leeched."

Oh by the way Vote for Big Clive, our future PM! http://youtu.be/SgBgHordXlg?t=2m45s

Don't let his slim figure fool you. Kilo for Kilo he's a political heavyweight