Understanding the full value of international students

The evolving COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare not only the risk of commercial orientation driving international education in major destinations but also the ways international students are situated within the current model of internationalisation as a tradeable commodity.

It is a critical time to reflect on how the direction and values of internationalisation have been framed through the ways international students have been positioned during the pandemic.

Not just on economic issue

In the wake of COVID-19, it has become clear that public discussions about international education recovery have positioned international students predominantly as customers of an export industry. Numerous headlines focusing on lost revenues, shifts in market share and student recruitment diversification have continued to expose how international students’ value is measured largely in economic terms.

The dominant discourse focusing on revenue losses facing host universities appears to overshadow international students’ enormous contributions and value to host countries’ universities, culture and society beyond financial terms.

Despite its dire impact and emerging challenges, COVID-19 can offer us an opportunity to re-imagine and transform international education.

However, the current focus on the economic value of international students may represent a missed opportunity to recognise and optimise the diverse cultural, intellectual and experiential values that international students can offer to internationalise online delivery, made the new normal by COVID-19, and to enrich learning for all.

Supplying jobs versus taking jobs away

In response to our recent analyses about the circumstances facing international students and international graduates in Australia during the pandemic, many comments from the broader host community regard them as having negative impacts on the employment, wages and the welfare of Australians.

Support for international students generally triggers anxiety from a xenophobic base of local Australians about (un)employment, job competition, housing, migration and emerging challenges of economic recession, exacerbated by COVID-19.

The wider local community tends to position international students in competition with local Australians and to be largely ignorant of their role in job creation for locals. Rather than taking away jobs, international students support around 250,000 Australian full-time jobs.

International students make a vital contribution to creating jobs not only at Australian universities but also in related ancillary services such as tourism, hospitality, accommodation, transport, entertainment and retail. They play a major role in generating jobs, supporting wages and lifting the living standards of Australians.

Despite being non-citizens, many international students are part of the essential frontline workforce serving the Australian community, especially in the elderly care and supermarket sectors. Nonetheless, while their 20-hour working week restrictions in sectors critical to the pandemic are being relaxed, international students are not entitled to the federal government’s JobKeeper subsidy and coronavirus supplement.

The federal policy positions international students as ‘them’ as opposed to ‘us’ and as ‘outsiders’ as opposed to the rhetoric of international students being an integral part of the Australian community.

International students’ ineligibility for federal wage subsidies makes them more vulnerable to exploitation during and in the aftermath of the pandemic. As many international students and graduates desperately need an income to cover their basic living expenses, they are likely to accept very poor conditions of employment and under-paid jobs, especially in a constrained labour market with rising unemployment and heightened job competition.

The JobKeeper subsidy is to support both employees and organisations. Therefore, the federal government’s exclusion of international students and graduates from COVID-19 wage subsidies disadvantages not only this temporary worker cohort but also employers and organisations that legitimately employ them. Such an insecurity may in turn lead to employers’ further hesitation or refusal to recruit international students and graduates, thereby negatively impacting upon their employability and financial status.

Vulnerability versus agency

International students have been one of the most vulnerable groups during the crisis. They face various challenges, including adjustments to online learning, uncertainty and insecurity due to university and border closures, job losses and financial hardships, lack of accommodation and support networks, discrimination and mental health issues.

International students’ insecurity, vulnerability and precarity are often associated with the conditions of temporarily moving away from their country of citizenship and residing in the host country with restricted entitlements due to their non-citizenship status.

The COVID-19 outbreak has exacerbated these conditions and exposed a major gap in the current international education system: the lack of a coherent and coordinated cross-border mechanism to protect international students’ welfare, security rights entitlements and humanitarian needs .

Nevertheless, on various international student forums, international students have provided mutual support and advice and shared numerous stories of struggle as well as self-transformation. Both individual and collective agency has been enacted and international student communities have banded together to support each other during the pandemic.

While various reports on the hardships facing international students during COVID-19 are critical to provide insights into their plight as well as the support they need, the dominant discourse largely frames international students as victims. Yet, the vulnerabilities of international students should not be misrepresented as a lack of resilience or ability to act in the face of adversity.

Outbound versus inbound mobility

Both inbound and outbound mobilities are integral dimensions of international education. COVID-19 has caused the greatest disruption to both flows of student mobility. Ironically, public debates about the recovery of international student mobility and international education have predominantly concentrated on inbound international student mobility.

Australia has taken pride in promoting a distinctive two-way flow of students between Australia and the Indo-Pacific region through the New Colombo Plan. The plan is a signature initiative of student mobility and a prominent pillar of public diplomacy through which Australian students are positioned as ambassadors when it comes to general connections between Australia and the region.

While outbound mobility via the New Colombo Plan is a distinctive symbol of reciprocal international education, the attention it has received during the pandemic has not been equivalent to inbound mobility in public discussions.

The pandemic has made it clear that public discussions about international education in leading countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States have been narrowly framed around strategies to reinstate destination attraction, stabilise market shares and mitigate the financial losses.

Despite the significant efforts of study abroad offices and related stakeholders to explore alternative ways of working with fewer resources to optimise student learning in an increasingly virtual world, the profound impacts of this health crisis on outbound mobility and outgoing students tend to be regarded as less important in the dominant discourse about international education recovery.

Moving forward

While COVID-19 has exposed the devaluation of international education, it has opened up the possibility for a critical reflection of the key principles and directions of international education.

COVID-19 catalyses a more concentrated push towards enhancing student experiences and towards improving the resilience, sustainability and transformation of the international education sector. The pandemic has given rise to some emergent questions:

• How do we educate and raise the awareness of the wider local community about the values of international students?

• What represents the key constructs of internationalisation in online delivery?

• How do we integrate and capitalise on international students’ diverse transnational knowledge, cultural, professional and language resources in enriching the curriculum and pedagogy in online delivery?

• How do we internationalise the student experience and teaching and learning in an increasingly virtual world?

• How do we reframe the principles and values of international education through virtual mobility and internships?

• To what extent has international education become more inclusive for non-mobile students and those from more disadvantaged backgrounds in an increasingly virtual world?

• How do we recognise and build on internationalisation at home to optimise benefits for all students in the new context in which internationalisation through mobility abroad is significantly constrained?

• How do we rebuild a resilient, inclusive and humanistic international education sector beyond simply international student recruitment?

Ly Tran is a professor in Deakin University’s School of Education and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. Her research focuses on international students, student mobility, international graduate employability, Australian students’ learning in the Indo-Pacific region and institutional responses in international education. Tran’s research and publications can be found in this profile.