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Chronicle of Higher Education
Tuesday, March 9, 2004
Australia Sees Strong Gains in Enrollment of Foreign Students
By BURTON BOLLAG
Foreign students flocked to Australia last year, according to figures released by the Australian government on Monday, a trend that suggests that colleges and universities there have been the beneficiaries of tougher visa requirements imposed since 2001 in the United States.
Australia saw a 16.5-percent increase in the number of foreign college students, to approximately 167,000, in the 2003 academic year, which ended in November. The largest group of overseas students, approximately 32,000, was from China. That number represents a 20-percent increase over the previous year.
Those trends contrast with an increase of only 0.6 percent, to 586,323, in the number of foreign students in the United States in the 2002-3 academic year. The number of Chinese students in the United States was up 2 percent, to 64,757.
Australia also saw sharp increases in the numbers of students from India (up 27 percent) and South Korea (up 19 percent). In the United States, the number of students from India increased by 12 percent in 2002-3, and those from South Korea by 5 percent.
Foreign-exchange experts in the United States said the much stronger growth of international students in Australia was worrying but not surprising.
"There's no question that other countries are making proactive efforts to recruit foreign students," said Victor C. Johnson, associate executive director for public policy of Nafsa: Association of International Educators. "The United States, on the other hand, is doing the opposite. Not only don't we have an active policy of recruiting foreign students, we are putting visa obstacles in the way."
Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, foreign students applying for visas for graduate studies and research positions in scientific subjects have faced special difficulties, said Mr. Johnson, adding that "most of the Chinese fall into this category."
Tony Crooks, executive director of the Australian Education Office in Washington, said the strong growth in Australia's international-student population has been driven by the tighter U.S. visa restrictions.
But he added that Australia has had steady, strong annual growth in the numbers of foreign students for the past 15 years. "The Australians have had a policy of going out and strongly promoting their higher education," he said.
According to Allan E. Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education, the United States' share of international students has fallen to just under 30 percent of the estimated two million people in the world who are studying abroad today, from over 40 percent of the total 10 years ago. "Other countries," he said, "are doing much more to attract foreign students."
Mr. Johnson, of Nafsa, said the trend was troubling from the perspective of American national-security and foreign-policy interests. "It matters," he said, "when people in other countries in the world stop thinking about the United States as the first choice when they think about getting a higher education."
Copyright © 2004 Chronicle of Higher Education
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