::fc-announce:: The Age: Unis depend on foreign students to stayafloat - May 7, 2005

[Trish Bolton]

I'm loving fibreculture tonight - so political. 
Could the mainstream media be slow in catching on because no-one 'gets up and stands up' for what they believe in. International students are the meat in this otherwise meatless sandwhich. They are seduced by pretty pictures and the gush of marketing spin to join us here in sunny, egalitarian, post Hanson Oz, only to find that their language skills (written and/or oral)  may not be up to even Pauline par. Academics are left to somehow navigate a course between 'standards', moral obligation to the conned and vulnerable, to the reality of what 'is' in the climate of neo-liberal Australia where no-one, but no-one makes a fuss - that would be un-Australian. But we are all complicit - isn't it true that academics are rewarded for increasing international enrolments by deals done between union and management for not speaking out against such agreements - for who would dare when tenure is so thin on the ground. 
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