Value of International Students, Education and Immigration

The value of international education and international students, tangible and intangible, is egregiously under - estimated by the application of a narrow 'white nativist' or politically opportunistic prism that ignores inconvenient facts and dynamics.

Many Australians of Anglo Irish heritage focus too much upon international students described as ‘immigrants’, their potential for permanent residency (with significant hurdles) and demands for same ‘foreign’ students to return home in support of their home country.

Conversely same qualifications are used by Australians internationally, many of the same gain other residency or even dual citizenship, yet there are no demands for the same e.g. to return home and/or pay back fees?

This dynamic is simply a reflection of increasing geographical and social mobility (taken for granted in the EU) for all in the developed and many in the less developed worlds for whom higher education and/or technical skills and languages improve their lives and others’.

Meanwhile too many narratives from our mono-cultural political, media and social elites seem about creating ‘us vs them’ for voters, and worse, deep seated Nativist or colonial ideology.

Global population is expected to peak mid-century whereby there may be increased competition for people, with sub-Saharan Africa being the only place with population growth and significant younger demographic cohorts.

Late news: The U.K. has announced the re-introduction of post graduate work visas for international university graduates.

International Students and Education Create Value (Image copyright Pexels.com)

Australia should try to keep more international students who are trained in our universities

Jihyun Lee - September 13, 2019 6.02am AEST

Australia’s education system takes almost one in ten of all international students from countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

That’s according to the latest Education at a Glance report from the OECD. But Australia should do more to retain some of those students after graduation or it risks losing good talent overseas.

A degree of talent

The OECD report says Australia’s higher education sector is heavily reliant on international students. They represent about 48% of those enrolled in masters and 32% in doctoral programs.
This is partly due to a lack of interest among Australians in pursuing higher-degree study compared to other countries, about 10% in Australia versus 15% across OECD countries.

International students make up 40% of doctoral graduates in Australia, compared to 25% across OECD countries. That’s higher than the US (27%) and Germany (18%), the other two popular destinations for international students.

Australian students are not choosing some STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects as much as those in other OECD countries. For example, only 17% of adults (aged 25 to 64) with a tertiary degree had studied engineering, manufacturing and construction.

Other comparable industrialised countries such as Sweden (25%), Korea (24%), Japan (23%) and Canada (21%) are obviously doing better.  This trend appears to be getting worse because the proportion of new students entering STEM-related bachelor degree programs is lower in Australia (21%), compared to 27% across OECD and partner countries.

While the government here provides for up to four years of post-higher-degree stay for international students, it is inevitable that Australia faces a drain of foreign-born specialists who were educated in Australia.

In 2017, the Australian government granted permanent visas to only 4% of foreign students and temporary graduate visas to only 16% to live in Australia after completing their study. It is obvious then that many international students return home after they study in Australia.

What can the Australian government do?

We need to provide better incentives for those who complete a higher-degree program, especially in the STEM areas, to stay on in Australia.

The OECD’s report says people who studied information and communication technologies (ICT) and engineering as well as construction and manufacturing will continue to benefit greatly from strong labour-market opportunities everywhere in the world.

Australia can do better in attracting younger generations to be trained in the STEM area at higher degree levels. We then need to try to retain more of the foreign-born higher-degree holders rather than sending them back home.

Being afraid of an influx of Chinese or Indian students who will contribute to development of innovation and technological changes in this country should become a thing of the past.

Good news for Australia’s education

The Education at a Glance program aims to give an annual snapshot of the effectiveness of educational systems – from early childhood to doctoral level – across all OECD and partner countries.

At almost 500 pages, the 2019 report does contain some good news for Australia. Australia spends a higher proportion of its GDP (based on public, private and international sources) on education, 5.8% compared to the OECD average of 5.0%.

The Australian education system strongly promotes compulsory education. Our 11 years of compulsory education is the longest among OECD countries. That means each student gets 3,410 more hours over the period of compulsory education.

When it comes to people going on to further studies, the proportion of tertiary-educated Australians has increased over the past ten years. It is now 51%, compared to the OECD average of 44%.

On graduation, the average debt for Australian students is US$10,479 (A$15,243), one of the lowest among OECD countries. It’s about half that of New Zealand US$24,117 (A$35,080), which has similar tuition fees and financial support systems.

Education pays off

Australian young adults with vocational qualifications have a higher employment rate (83%) than the OECD average (80%).  Although earning power is still greater for those with a higher level of educational attainment, the financial return from more schooling is far smaller in Australia.

Compared to those with upper secondary education, full-time tertiary-educated Australian workers earn 31% more, compared to 57% more on average across OECD countries. Adults with a master’s or doctoral degree earn 52% more, compared to 91% more on average across OECD countries.

The OECD attributes this trend partially to good labour-market opportunities for those with upper secondary vocational qualifications.  The OECD also notes that the average employment rate for Australian tertiary-educated adults is 85%, only two percentage points higher than the 83% for those with a vocational upper secondary or post-secondary non-tertiary qualification. This is one of the smallest differences across OECD countries.

For more articles and blogs about international education, immigration, population growth and white nationalism click through.

Islamophobia and Antisemitism promoted by White Nationalists

In recent years both Islamophobia and antisemitism have come to the fore in US, UK, Australian and European politics, media and social narratives, emanating from white nationalism, conspiracy theories and Nazi ideology.

Following are excerpts from an article by Nafeez Ahmed explaining the co-dependence and shared ideology of Islamophobia and antisemitism in the US white nationalist movement, now in the mainstream and coursing through social narratives including the ‘great replacement’ theory.

 Jerusalem the Meeting Point of Islamophobia, Antisemitism and Christian Zionism (Image copyright Pexels)

From the Foreign Policy in Focus:

‘Behind Islamophobia Is a Global Movement of Antisemites

By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

The global rise of white nationalist violence proves that the threat of fascism is not just
about one community — it threatens all communities: white people, black people,
Muslims, Jews, and beyond.

The spate of mass shootings at the end of July comes head on the heels of an escalating epidemic of U.S. gun violence. Since the beginning of the year, there have been at least 257 mass shootings, which have killed 9,080 people. This is nearly triple the number of people that died on 9/1 1 , the terrorist attack which justified U.S.-led wars that have killed at least a million people.
Over the last decade, nearly three quarters of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil have been
linked to domestic right-wing extremists, with just a quarter linked to Islamists. And in
201 8, every terrorist murder in the U.S. was linked to the extreme right.

The ideology of extreme white nationalism is now a bigger U.S. national security threat,
and a bigger cause of death, than Islamist terrorism or immigration. Yet millions of white
Americans have been brainwashed into believing the exact opposite….

The shared ideology of global white nationalism

In one of these tweets, Hopkins openly endorsed the rise of extreme nationalist politicians around the world, including Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban, and leader of the Polish Law and Justice party (PiS) Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

All four politicians have promoted divisive, xenophobic policies….

The making of the ‘great replacement’ mythology

It is now widely recognized that at the core of this shared far-right ideology is the so called “great replacement” theory, which posits that a genocide of white people is being achieved through their replacement by migrants, mostly from Muslim countries (or, in the United States, from Latin America).

The overlapping xenophobic agendas of these politicians illustrates how latent Antisemitism remains a driving force in this global movement, which nevertheless masquerades under the guise of anti-migrant and anti-Muslim sentiment as a mechanism to achieve mainstream reach…

…In short, the focus on a “Muslim invasion” through a combination of mass immigration and birth rates allowed far-right groups inspired by neo-Nazi ideas to rehabilitate themselves and conceal their traditional anti-Semitic roots.

It is no surprise then to see that many of the groups that have played the biggest role in
spreading the core tenets of the “great replacement” mythology through the specter of a
global Islamist conspiracy are simultaneously allied with longstanding white nationalist
movements…

Widening the net

After 9/1 1 , the U.S. government launched a major multi-agency investigation into
terrorism financing across multiple agencies known as Operation Green Quest, focused
on uncovering Muslim charities operating as “front organizations” for terrorists.

The problem was that U.S. government agencies like the Treasury Department, FBI and
many others had a nebulous and weak understanding of the Muslim world, often leading investigators to see connections and ties which were not there and to read conspiratorial meaning into every association or relationship that might potentially link individuals or organizations to extremism — however tenuous….

Far-right penetration of the FBI

Indeed, part of the problem is that for years the FBI has suffered from institutional
Islamophobia.

FBI training manuals obtained by Spencer Ackerman for Wired revealed that after 9/1 1
the agency was teaching its counter terrorism agents that “main stream” [sic] American
Muslims are likely to be terrorist sympathizers; that the Prophet Mohammed was a “cult
leader”; and that the Islamic practice of giving charity is no more than a “funding
mechanism for combat.” And “combat” can include numerous techniques including
“immigration” and “law suits”. Thus, a Muslim who immigrates to the U.S. or sues the FBI
for harassment is seen as just another agent of the jihad….Rather the “Muslim invasion” narrative is central to the goal of legitimizing a broad, xenophobic agenda rooted in anti-Semitic movements historically aligned with neo Nazism.

The alliance between Islamophobes and anti-Semites

That is why so many of the same groups promoting Islamophobic myths play a lead role
in amplifying white nationalist concepts…..

….I described this alarming phenomenon as a form of “reconstructed-Nazism,” “indicating that the core ideology [of the global far-right] embraces core Nazi principles, but embeds them in a range of cosmetic narrative adjustments which allow those principles to function subliminally in a new post war, anti-Nazi, and post-9/1 1 global cosmopolitan context.”…

Conclusion

…The upshot of this is clear: Jews and Muslims cannot afford to be at loggerheads in the fight against fascism. Both communities are in the firing line of a global far-right agenda advanced by groups and political parties forged in the historic bowels of Nazism.

Whatever their political differences and disagreements, both communities need to forge
bonds of solidarity in the struggle against racism. If they are to survive, our communities
have no choice but to resist being distracted by efforts to divide us and turn us against
each other, which is a deliberate far-right strategy to debilitate both Jewish and Muslim communities.

Instead, we need to identify new lines of strategic cooperation to resist and disrupt a global far-right movement which threatens not only our communities, but the very foundations of our democracies.
This means that no matter what our political leanings might be, the struggles against
Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are fundamentally about the same thing: protecting diverse, inclusive, and free societies.’

For more articles and blogs about the political issues regarding immigration, population growth, white nationalism etc. click through.