As one who witnessed the decimation of education since the Hawke/Keating government turned a useful working model of traditional education on its head, no sympathy here.

Neoliberal governments since have joined the wagon of destruction, by adding in oversupplies of immigrants through a back door which is more worn than the front, to prop up a failed ponzie scheme of pyramid selling which, in the end its good riddance to bad rubbish.

And the crocodile tears for Chinese scammers using the education ponzie as a vehicle to scorch the locals out of their housing and onto the streets, suck eggs!

Dan

I would be "thrilled" to see the education of foreigners fizzle out, never to return. We should be concentrating on educating our own, not enriching universities and bringing in Chinese spies to Australia. This business of relying on Communists for income must stop.

have been involved in the Australian International Education industry for almost 20 years and I have been thrilled to watch it grow and prosper over the years
Michael Baron,
Yes, but education is not about the bureaucrats' pockets, is it ! I'd have thought preventing indoctrination & teaching values & useful information instead would be the main criteria of education.
As an uneducated observer even I can see the dumbing-down since the Goaf years of so-called 'educated' people. Unlike you, I feel dismay !

If coronavirus does nothing but eliminate this dirty back door immigration scheme, used to increase the earnings of academics, themselves of little value to Oz, then all the rest of the pain suffered by those infected & real industries like the tourism industry will be worth while.

To the extent foreign student education was an immigration scam good riddance. Graduates had to spend two years in the most appalling rural hardship such as the Gold Coast before getting residence. It was clearly getting out of hand when UTas started moving out of Sandy Bay into the Hobart CBD. They purchased hotels and a giant hardware store as well as developing prime waterfront sites.

In contrast places like Cambridge UK took centuries to become student towns. I'm also a bit suspicious of the value some of the courses. Get fat fees for a Diploma of Aromatherapy or whatever then throw the student out on the street.

Hopefully, Australia can get back to educating Australians, and not having its universities run as business operations simply relying on more and more on foreign students to promote supposed greatness

Anyone who describes education as an 'industry' has no real appreciation of the true value of education. The role of any country's education system is to educate its citizens. Education is not a commodity and it shouldn't be put up for sale to the highest bidder. Educational facilities who've been progressively starved of funds ever since the Neo-liberal reforms of the Dawkins era shouldn't have to rely on selling an educational 'product'. Covid-19 provides the perfect opportunity for governments to start properly funding our educational institutions and ensuring access to them is based on academic merit and not on market forces.

We made a mistake commodifying education and turning our economy into a service-oriented one! And just plain daft as the pandemic demonstrates as does our absurd reliance on totalitarian communist China! Along with the idealogical imperative of dismantling all our cooperative industries in favour of (insane) aspirational individualism!

Or if you will, insanity personified that turned a formerly egalitarian nation into a divided rabble ripe for the plucking, given the demonstratable, consequential lack of social cohesion! As we sort to privatise our top money earning public amenities and entrench unearned privilege!

Allowed our most productive manufacturing to be off-shored due to ever increasing electricity charges and as those industries went, so did the company tax they used to pay!

All while patent numskulls like the proud author, watched in admiration at the changes! Changes that all but guarantee, we will emerge from this pandemic/economic crisis in the thrall of a prolonged depression!

Something we might avoid if wwe sign over/sell our entire economicc sovereignty to China? If we haven't already curtesy of the third colomn in our midst! A Darwin port anyone?

I believe the pandemic is the wake up call our, sleepwalking toward disaster, leaders have needed. So we can start down a new pathway not nearly as dependant on offshore nations for our value-added/manufactured commodities!

And given that change, we can reinstall sanity into education, decommodify it and return it to its former status as a basic human right! As is shelter! And a living wage!

Let China persist with slave wages and gulags where slavery is rife and needed in order for communist regimes to survive!

I cannot conceive of any right-minded person being proud of our current assosciation and economic dependence on a totalitarian state for our domestic education outcomes, save individuals that lack normal human empathy and or have made the dollar their God?

We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine.
Alan B

The role of any country's education system is to educate its citizens.
Bronwyn,
So, why is this not done here ?

Judging by all preceding comments in this thread the money making industry that Michael Baron etc built has severe popularity problems.

Is the criticism fair?

Why yes.

In this severe health crisis:

- farmers are screaming for low paid backpacker picker labour and

- educational money makers scream for foreign student cash cows.
____________________________________

1. Michael Baron needs to remember that many foreign students subsidise part of their high fees by being part-time casual workers. Many such workers in Australia need to get JOBKEEPER paid by Australian taxpayers.

Once foreign students are in Australia they too would demand JOBKEEPER.

Michael Baron, Australian tax payers should not be required to subsidise foreign student-part time workers with JOBKEEPER.

2. Michael Baron, many other foreign students operate by flying to/from China and India several times a year.

Michael Baron - should the Australian taxpayer be subsidising QUARANTINE for foreign students as they re-enter Australia 2 or 3 times a year?

3. Michael Baron should all Australians be exposed to a higher COVID HEALTH RISK as foreign students re-enter Australia 2 or 3 times a year?
_____________________________

You'll be OK Michael Baron. There are still 100,000s or millions of Australian students the money making from student sector can take from.

Well, it's pretty clear then, the worst event to befall the Australian education sector, was Hawke and Keating.
Many of the forward thinking like myself, recognised this immediately as industry fled the country and the great Australian slide began.

Where is Keating now? Draped in a rainbow flag and living in a Pots Point mansion with his boy friends.
These sort of animals should not be given oxygen.

Dan

diver dan,
As far as I know Keating wasn't Uni educated so it came as a real shock how little pragmatism & common sense he had as PM.

If Labor hadn't taken education down the user-pays road, the Coalition would have done so under Howard, so I wouldn't go too overboard on pinning all of education's current woes onto Keating.

That's where all the experts went wrong about education. Anyone with a brain & some common sense would provide education for anyone who can handle & absorb education.
The user pays system killed off & will continue to kill off education.
The Goaf only provided education for anyone who wasn't inclined to do work because in return he got their vote. Same with national Service !
Five decades later we're still coping the effects of this insanity !

Houses built on sand.

Politicised education. Recipe for failure!

Dan

FOREIGN STUDENTS TO FLY INTO ADELAIDE, BUT

The Australian government announced last week that a pilot program to allow international students to fly into Australia from China, Hong Kong, and Japan will commence next month. Up to 300 students are expected to arrive into Adelaide before undertaking the standard 14-day hotel QUARANTINE.

SMH, 16th August 2020 http://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/international-student-flights-to-australia-to-restart-in-september-20200816-p55m8t.html reported:

"INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS AND UNIVERSITIES WILL BE FORCED TO STUMP UP THE COST OF TRAVEL AND QUARANTINE as the federal government prepares for the first batch of students to arrive in Australia.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham announced on [16TH August] that up to 300 students would start arriving in Adelaide as part of a pilot program to restart the international education sector which has been pummelled by the coronavirus pandemic."

"Birmingham said South Australia had demonstrated it could repatriate Australians from overseas without community outbreaks and the same approach would be taken for international students.

"We want to make sure that anything that happens in relation to international arrivals coming into Australia is done with the strictest of safety standards in place," he said.

"I also want to stress as well that NO TAXPAYER dollars will be used in terms of supporting students flying into Australia or quarantining as is required."

Immigration Agents are now offering rewards to people who recommend overseas students to apply for study Visa !

Good comments overall.

The article seems to be symptomatic of the myopic self serving education industry. Interesting that the people on the Baron Consulting Website are apparently not British Australians- yet he claims to speak in the interest of Australians. Maybe once his family has been in Australia for several generations he will earn the right. Perhaps not... It's interesting that "Communist Cultural Hedgemony" is becoming "Good Business".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_hegemony

http://www.facebook.com/DrMichaelBaron/posts
Dr Michael Baron - Educator & Consultant, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. 738 likes. Michael Baron was born in Moscow, Russia in 1976. He is the founder and Managing Director of Baron Consulting, a...

http://csu-au.academia.edu/MichaelBaron
Michael Baron, Charles Sturt University, Business and Information Technology Department, Faculty Member. Studies ITIL and IT Service Management, IT Project Management, and IT Governance. Dr Michael Baron is an Australian Writer, Educator and Business