I seem to be the only one on The Forum who is concerned about the way in which Australia's institutions of higher education have become migration processing centres in addition to their traditional role as places of learning.

My GUESTIMATE is that 25% of the graduates from Australian unis are foreign Chinese who then use the degree as a pathway to a permanent residency visa (typically by getting a post grad job with an Australian company).

That means there are a lot of locals not getting a place in a uni because "their" places have gone to overseas Chinese. What usually happens to these people? Well, I guess they end up on the unemployment scrap heap becoming a generation of no-hopers and drug addicts.

I see this as one of our greatest social problems. And it is a problem that Aboriginal Australia can tell you all about because something similar happened to them under the British presence in Australia.

Mr. Opinion,

"I seem to be the only one on The Forum who is concerned about the way in which Australia's institutions of higher education have become migration processing centres...."

No, you are not. Many of us are. It's Just that talking about it all the time hasn't changed the situation, nor will it change the situation as long as we keep voting Coalition or Labor. We need a new Conservative party, but most voters don't want that, so we put up with what we have and nothing changes.

I say, leave it to the young smartarses who have rooted Australia. Let them work it out.

CM,

Aboriginal people have never been a single 'cultural group since their ancestors came down the Malayan Peninsula sixty thousand years ago.

But Aboriginal people have been mixing with whitefellas and with each other in towns and cities since the earliest days of Settlement. The majority of the Indigenous population now lives in towns and cities, perhaps 70 %. The vast majority of Indigenous university graduates, perhaps 55,000 out of the current 60,000 total, have been born and raised in the towns and cities. They quite understandably intend to build their careers in the towns and cities, since they don't owe rural and remote 'communities' anything particularly.

As 'communities' disintegrate (as they seem to be doing here in SA), yes, more Indigenous people will move to the towns and cities, some to holes-in-the-wall towns where work opportunities are minimal and lifelong welfare is maximal. But those who move to the cities can look forward to a generation or two building up their social and cultural capital (cf. Bourdieu), and getting their kids and grandkids on their feet in a fast-moving and competitive world.

And no, CM, those old racist notions of a 'Black State' (cf. Colonel Genders' notions of the 1920s); notions of an 'inviolate central reserve' ; and more recent half-arsed ideas of a separate state - or country - by some dim-witted Indigenous people themselves; are long past. Self-determination didn't work anywhere much in Australia and degenerated into the worst forms of Apartheid, de-skilling people and infantilising them.

So moving to the cities may be the only option for Indigenous people.

And university study will always be part of that.

Joe

Foul-Mouth,

Why don't you tell everybody why getting into an Australian uni is so popular with overseas Chinese?

Maybe you could tell them how it is China's back door into Australia.

To give you an idea of how stupid the education system has become;
I was in an emergency are of a hospital yesterday and there are
automatic doors to exit. A nurse told me that someone asked how to get out.
The nurse told them to press the black button near the doors.
She got abused for calling it a "black" button.
This is how a faulty education system escapes into the real world.

Bazz,

Are you sure the nurse wasn't colour blind?