Education geared for growth
Education industry … this is one of the sectors that makes
Australia one of the most favourable destinations around the globe and that
reinforces the multicultural identity of the modern Australia.
Andrew Robb, the minister for Trade and Investment presents
his view in this media coverage from ‘The Australian’ concerning the importance
of keeping up to date with the status of the Australian education industry- the
nation’s fourth largest export, behind iron ore, coal and gold, and last year
it had student enrolments of more than 500,000 earned 15 billion in revenue,
and employed more than 100,000 people. The significance of contribution of the
industry to the Australian economy depicts the ever-growing multitude of
interrelation at individual, national and international levels as the figures
that come with strengthened people-to-people, and institution-to-institution
linkages that will last decades, as Andrew states.
But the current drawbacks, as Andrew identifies, include but
not limited to the high value of the Australian dollar, a student visa system
that was uncompetitive by world standards, and stronger competition from other
countries and these are the contributing factors that resulted in a significant
decline in the number of students since the peak of 630,000 enrolments in 2009
according to the article. And he
indentifies signs of a strong pick-up in the numbers and yet there is a
pressing need to promote our education and training excellence.
What I tend to focus more on as one of the reasons for
occurrence of the problems with education industry in Australia, however, is
about intangible forms of struggle that are experienced by both Australian
migrant residents and overseas students in common, more often than not.
Well, it has got a lot to do with cultural issues by the
nature of it. A lot of times I have seen people-including myself in my early
days of settlement into Australia-struggling with adjusting themselves into
Australian society no matter what their purposes are to come and stay in
Australia for a certain period of time whether it be temporary or indefinite.
Quite often one of these forms of struggle is about understanding and
practicing every day hidden curriculum type of thing which does not get taught
explicitly most of the time but rather implicitly only if you familiarize
yourself within a variety of settings in social context in any country. The
nature of this thing dictates the realisation of the fact that it is only
achievable through a generous amount of chances of social interaction with
people of dominant culture (i.e. mainstream) in a number of different settings.
But unfortunately, according to my own observations I have been accumulating so
far, it is not necessarily as easy as it should be to get such opportunities for
non-Australians to get used to hidden curricular elements in Australia.
An educational institution is a place for social
reproduction and as part of this social reproduction, they get together to
learn how to exchange values from one another and gain emotional, technical and
social nurturing. It is lacking in people’s efforts to actively seek for these
things from one another, regardless of their backgrounds and why it is the case
is partly demonstrated by G. Vass(2012) where he argues that there is an
ongoing failure to account for the racialised underpinnings of the Australian
educational setting(p. 1). The need for unifying all kinds of students by
bringing them together through sharing of assistance for learning and
acquisition of hidden curriculums for students of non-mainstream background is
not well catered for.
Andrew Robb announced a new initiative for attracting more
international students, called digital postcard competition where a competition
to win a year’s free study in Australia along with lots of promotion about
Australian education but I doubt it as anything more than just a single-use
commercial trick unless there would be an improvement for the above-mentioned
issue that is amongst the most important things keep in mind with.
Greg Vass, Race Ethnicity and Education (2012): The
racialised educational landscape in Australia: listening to the whispering
elephant, Race Ethnicity and Education, DOI: 10.1080/13613324.2012.674505
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