Author: Nicole

There is a lot of talk in Australia these days on the subject of fraud and corruption in how international students are recruited and dealt with.

To begin with, there is a great deal of concern over academic standards slipping because of pressure on professors to push international students – which represent a fifth of total enrolment in Australia’s post-secondary institutions – through the system, even when their academic performance is below standards. A recent report on international students in Australia from a governmental anti-corruption commission states that the post-secondary system in New South Wales is so dependent on international students that they cannot afford to fail them. The short term problems include international students not receiving the support they need (or education they hoped for). One of the long-term problems is that the quality of education as a whole declines, the schools’ reputations decline along with it.

A further dimension is that Australian media has been publishing numerous stories and reports on problems in the recruitment of these international students. In Australian post-secondary institutions, the use of recruiters to find international students is wide-spread (while it has been a fairly uncommon practice in the US). It is argued that these recruiters are paid on a “per head” basis and therefore it is unsurprising to find that many of them encourage students to doctor their credentials. Fraud and misrepresentation, in other words, are huge problems.

Read more in Inside Higher Ed, which also makes the point that these problems should be considered carefully as there is more interest in the US to start using more independent agents to recruit international students.

The Greater Victoria Development Agency recently launched, in partnership with local post-secondary institutions, a new program called Education Victoria. Local government and education clearly agree that their interests are aligned: bringing in more international students will boost revenues for both schools and the local economy. It is estimated that international students in British Columbia bring in $30,000 per head in spending, for a total of 1.8 million dollars (and create 21,000 jobs). Victoria is also facing a labour shortage in the next ten years, so this is also seen as a means to address that problem. The benefit of this partnership is that it can ride on the coat tails of Tourism Victoria’s marketing experience.

Read more in the Times Colonist.

According to the University World News, the number of Indian students studying abroad increased by just over 10% in 2014, with a total of approximately 300,000 students. 85% percent of those students went to one of five countries – the US, UK, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. This is an important recovery, as numbers had been dropping for several years. There are still more Chinese students studying abroad than Indian, but again the growth rate was highest with Indian students.

Early in April, Colleges and institutes Canada signed an agreement with Citizenship and Immigration Canada for Phase Two of the Canadian Immigrant Integration Program. This phase will “expand pre-arrival services and ensure consistent curricula and materials worldwide”. The pre-arrival support that CICan has provided since 2007 has contributed to excellent integration outcomes for participants, according to CICan.

Visit’s CICan’s site for the full announcement.

Surveys of employers over the past few years have consistently shown that recent post-secondary school graduates are lacking in soft skills (otherwise referred to as People Skills, Life Skills or 21st Century Skills). To address this problem, a number of Canadian colleges have been making changes to their programs. Last fall, George Brown College in Toronto piloted a course devoted entirely to soft skills. Other colleges are collaborating with businesses and high schools to address the problem.

We took note of this as we have been promoting Macmillan’s MindSeries, which is unique amongst general English integrated skills courses because it explicitly addresses and develops Life Skills.

Read more in the Globe and Mail.

2014 saw an 11.1% increase over the previous year in the number of Chinese students studying abroad, for a total of 459,800. Interestingly, a large portion of this growth was from secondary school students, who approximately 30% of Chinese students stydying abroad. Some students are funded by the state or by businesses, but 92% are self-funded. Most students choose to study in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, France and Japan.

Read more in the ICEF Monitor.