Vice-chancellor slams ‘immoral tax’ on foreign students

The vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney says it is “immoral” that Australia relies on high-fee paying international students from poor families to prop up a broken funding system, writes Harry Pearl for the Daily Mail.

Dr Michael Spence said chronic underfunding of the tertiary sector meant that Australian universities were taxing “the poor families of Sichuan to subsidise the education of kids who went to Kings to become doctors and charge people a lot of money”, the Sydney Morning Herald reported. The King's School in Sydney is one of Australia's oldest and most prestigious private schools.

Spence was one of five vice-chancellors in a debate hosted by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia on 11 August. The group was discussing the demand-driven funding system of tertiary education, which was implemented in 2012 and removed limits on bachelor degree student numbers at universities. It replaced the supply system, where the government allocated places to universities, and led to a dramatic increase in student enrolments.
Full report on Daily Mail site