This month’s Four Corners special on Australia’s international student rorts featured several Murdoch University academics, who claimed the University had slashed education standards in a bid to entice international students, whose numbers lifted by 92% between 2017 and 2018. According to these academics, this huge lift in academic students, many of whom did not possess adequate English-language skills, led to increased cases of plagiarism, academic misconduct, and rising failure rates.
The below quotes from the Four Corners’ report encapsulates the situation:
In mid-2018 Murdoch University Associate Professor Gerd Schroder-Turk had a knock at his office door. It was a young female student from the Punjab region in India. “There was no sufficient background either in English language or in academic English and even in the very basic mathematics that she had done at high school,” he said. “However, having said that, this woman was under the impression that she was a high achiever. “Her eyes lit up when she told me this. She said, ‘I was so good that Murdoch University chose to give me a scholarship’.
“We noticed the change of the preparedness of the students in the classroom, and we realised that that level of preparedness is not adequate,” Associate Professor Schroder-Turk, who sits on the university’s senate, told Four Corners. “I have strong concerns about what this means for the integrity of the academic teaching at Murdoch if not more broadly in Australia”…
Dr Duncan Farrow, a senior mathematics lecturer and academic misconduct investigator, noticed a dramatic increase in cases of academic misconduct such as plagiarism by students by the end of first semester…
He spoke to teaching staff who said they were struggling to get some students through the coursework.
“They’re finding themselves having to redesign, in some cases, the units on the fly to accommodate the poor background a lot of the students have had,” he said.
“Many students seemed to be unable to understand the material that was put in front of them…
Local students reacted angrily to the Four Corners report, accusing the university of “dumbing down” courses and devaluing their degrees in the shameless pursuit of profit. And predictably, Murdoch university administrators vigorously refuted the claims stating that it is “proud to be a global university”.
Now, it has been revealed that the academics featured in the Four Corners expose are facing possible retribution from Murdoch University, according to National Tertiary Education Union WA division secretary, Jonathan Hallett. From The Australian:
“They are still very nervous about retribution — the silence is almost worse than some kind of action,” Dr Hallett said…
The union says its written request to the vice-chancellor Eeva Leinonen and chancellor David Flanagan asking for assurances that those who spoke up would be protected has received no response. Last week more than 180 NTEU members met and passed a resolution calling for an external inquiry…
“We want to be sure we have systems in place that are supporting those students. We are calling for more public accountability because internal processes seem to be failing.”
Curiously, despite the Murdoch University scandal, the Western Australian McGowan Government has announced that it will seek to boost international student numbers to Perth by 16,000, in part by granting them easier access to employment and residency:
Implementation of the Government’s strategy and the International Education Action Plan aims to attract an additional 16,000 students, bringing the total international student enrolments in Perth to an estimated 88,000 by 2022. This is expected to result in as much as $2.5 billion in State annual income and will generate about 15,500 jobs in the international education sector in WA by 2022…
The McGowan Government is implementing its Graduate Skilled Migration List, which aims to attract the best and brightest international graduates with PhDs, Masters, Honours, Bachelors and other higher degrees to live and work in WA.
Clearly, the McGowan Government wants to further erode education standards at Western Australian universities. Otherwise, why would it seek to boost numbers without addressing the underlying problems identified in the Four Corners’ report and elsewhere (e.g. here, here, here, here and here)?
Instead, what Mark McGowan should do is order a comprehensive review of the state’s tertiary education sector, in order to ascertain the true costs and benefits of the international student trade.
