Indian students - how Australia's education industry failed the PR test

The Times of India and TV News, using the The Age and The Herald Sun as background and quoting from local Indian student blogs, created a firestorm of negative press.

Three months later, a recent IDP survey says that about one third of international students (not including Indians) now feel less safe in Australia. That’s an example of strong media effects of TV, newspapers and negative “word of mouth”.

This is called the “fallacy of generalisation” so beloved of media commentators and it is the enemy of truth. According to the fallacy, if one Indian student is bashed on a train there must be 1000s of Indian students being attacked. The use of emotive appeals and appeals to fear, although irrational, are powerful.

Even so, in the same survey 75 per cent of Indian students and 80 per cent of students from other countries would recommend Australia to their friends. While students may be concerned about the nature of the debate, many are not being deeply or permanently affected by the headlines. This bodes well for the future of Australia’s international student market.

It was a fantastic piece of almost vaudevillian timing that two private RTO’s (registered training organisations) collapsed amidst outraged calls from Indian students saying that they had been ripped off.

The allegations of assaults and fraud have led to inquiries about the availability and standard of accommodation for international students and alleged transgressions of their workplace rights. Who ever thought up the term “viral marketing” knew a lot about how reporters work. Indeed, investigations such as these flush out people who are manipulating international students’ relatively weak bargaining power.

The core of the problem is the visa rorting system arising from education institutions and migration and education agents taking advantage of the Howard government’s policy change in 2001, to allow overseas students in Australia to apply for permanent residency as skilled migrants.

There was simply not enough regulation of the boom in students’ numbers that this provided, with all of the knock on effects in accommodation and work.

So what do we do?

First of all trips to New Delhi by government and university officials are useless. Establishing a new $8 million Australia India Institute at the University of Melbourne would have been great before the fact.

In September the government will hold an "International Student Round Table" to enable about 30 students from different countries to discuss their concerns about education and treatment while studying in Australia. Let the healing begin.

While the investigations in to rogue educational providers and agents are underway, the Federal Government should establish a marketing and PR wing in Australian Educational International to handle major campaigns - both positive and negative. A $15 billion industry deserves it.