Speakers at CQUniversity Melbourne this week (Tuesday) have drawn a line in the sand, calling for significant improvements to ensure the longer-term survival of Australia's much-vaunted international education sector...

Policy specialist Professor Simon Marginson (Uni of Melbourne) spoke of a window of opportunity as brief as the next 12 months to address the 'clear and present danger' looming on the horizon.

International Education Research Centre Director Professor Paul Rodan (second from right) with speakers Melissa Banks, Simon Marginson and Erlenawati Sawir CQUniversity's teaching and learning specialist Dr Erlenawati Sawir spoke about the need for advance academic preparation of students and the benefits flowing from lecturers who embrace the cultural variations in their classrooms.

Meanwhile, market specialist Melissa Banks (Mels Resources) provided rich quantitative data indicating trends in global student mobility.

Around 60 campus and industry representatives attended the forum considering the ‘Emerging Agenda', which was presented by CQUniversity's International Education Research Centre

Professor Marginson expressed concern that regulatory reform would not go far enough and a radical downturn in the number of good international students would become the only successful wake-up call.

"In that case we would lose much of the industry's gains before fixing it up," he said.

Professor Rodan welcomes participants to the event

Professor Marginson recognised much brilliant work in the industry and the benefits flowing to many individual students.

"But many individual students have not been so lucky, and the framework of regulation provides no means whereby best practice becomes generalised and universalised over time.

"The many self-congratulatory statements ... never admit that the under-funding of domestic teaching and research .. has partly emptied out the student experience, domestic and international.

"The macro-economic cost has been the damage to the fabric of the knowledge economy in Australia. The industry has been greedy ... and we have all paid a price for this blatant lack of moral fibre and bona fide educational values, especially international students themselves."

Professor Marginson said there were many issues and problems which were not adequately addressed by the regulatory framework and which could not be solved within it.

"I am less confident the present ESOS Act can be implemented in such a manner as to deal with the poor preparation of students before they arrive coupled with over-reliance on the testing mechanism of IELTS as a substitute for English language support before and during the programs, the poverty of intercultural learning in many institutions, the lack of mixing between international and local students, the problems of international students at work and the dangers they face in crowded and substandard housing, the less than 100 per cent coverage of medical insurance, the crass and often draconian conduct of the immigration department in its handling of alleged visa breaches, the severe loneliness and isolation of a large minority of students, about 20-30 per cent, at some point during their stay, and instances of discrimination and abuse, mostly in the general community."

Meanwhile, Dr Sawir said that, with the concept of 'west is the best' educators tend to pull policy and practice towards sameness, tending to ignore the significance of cultural variations.

"Challenges to the notion of sameness are necessary because we are living in a world composed of people of different cultural backgrounds and who speak different languages ... teachers have to respond to this changing outlook."

Dr Sawir suggested teachers challenge the boundaries of 'difference and sameness' through learning from the difference embodied in their classrooms; for example by using these differences as a teaching resource.

"Understanding staff attitudes is of particular importance as these attitudes tend to inform their teaching and learning practices," he said.

The researcher called for a more coherent way of thinking and a more systematic and agreed strategy of teaching and learning.