Universities ‘should make common cause’ against political enmity

Traditional international education rivals should make “common cause” as they sustain body blows from politicians who “don’t want to understand higher education”, a Sydney forum has heard.

British international education veteran David Pilsbury said UK and Australian educators from the public and private sectors should forget their differences and join forces to sidestep the “culture war” impact on universities.

Dr Pilsbury said British and Australian higher education both suffered from governments that mistrusted universities and conflated international student recruitment with migration.

“Higher education globally has become so politicised,” he told a round table convened by Oxford International Education Group, where he is chief development officer. “Is it time [for] new forms of partnership? We need to think about whether we could together start to make our own weather.”

Dr Pilsbury is a former deputy vice-chancellor of Coventry University, chief executive of the Worldwide Universities Network and head of research policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England. He said the UK and Australian sectors were both targets of “unevidenced assertions” about international students’ behaviour and their contribution to migration-related pressures on society.

The UK was repeatedly accused of having “too many international students” despite having fewer proportionally than Australia, and the Westminster government had launched a review of the abuse of post-study work rights despite lacking evidence of abuse, he said.

UK universities were sustaining “massive declines” in international enrolments, particularly from south Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, he continued, noting that student diversity had plummeted, with 70 per cent of foreign learners coming from seven countries – down from 13 just four years ago.

Dr Pilsbury said that instead of imagining that governments “love us” and would eventually change their tune, universities should share resources and risks with their competitors.

British institutions had reputational cachet in regions such as south Asia and decades of experience in Africa, the demographic boom zone of the 21st century. Australian institutions had expertise in destination marketing. Private outfits such as IDP had global data, and all three could benefit from shared investment.

“It’s about growing the pie,” Dr Pilsbury said. Lancaster and Deakin universities had provided a model of international collaboration in launching a joint branch campus in Indonesia, the forum heard.

Sydney-based media executive Charlton D’Silva blamed volatile government policy for the current spate of Australian visa rejections. “We [should] call out the real culprits,” he told the forum. “The education sector [is] the whipping horse for everything.”

Edwin van Rest, chief executive of student advisory company Studyportals, said educational institutions should look to industry for support. He said the public in his native Netherlands assumed that universities had a “hidden agenda” when they protested against political crackdowns on international education. But authorities took note of objections from employers who could no longer access the talent they needed. “The government’s in panic because 10 employers last week said [they’re] leaving.”

Strategist Ant Bagshaw said universities’ best defence against government hostility was to solve government problems. He said housing was the common thread in political backlashes against higher education in Australia, the UK and Canada. Universities had land in “great locations” and access to capital through superannuation and pension funds.

“The university sector should say, ‘We’re going to build a lot of housing,’” he said. “That would solve a government problem. The sector could do it. The sector’s big enough. It’s got enough capital.”

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com