In 2008, there were more than half a million international student enrolments onshore in Australia. It is estimated that international students contribute over $14 billion to the Australian economy, making the education sector the nation's third biggest export earner behind coal and iron ore.
International students studying in Australia on a student visa are given permission to work once they commence their course. A visa with permission to work enables the students to work up to 20 hours a week on a casual basis during course time and full-time during vacation periods.
The Australian Government Skilled Migration Program targets young people who have skills, education and outstanding abilities that will contribute to the Australian economy. International students with Australian qualifications account for about half the people assessed under the skilled migrant program.
International students who have graduated with Australian qualifications can apply for a Temporary Resident visa. This visa allows international students who do not meet the criteria for a permanent General Skilled Migration visa to remain in Australia for 18 months to gain skilled work experience. They can work full-time throughout the year and after achieving at least 1 year of professional work experience, they may qualify for a permanent General Skilled Migration visa.
Thus, the by-product of the above is a huge candidate market consisting of the following:
A pool of international students who are continuously looking for casual jobs
Continuous supply of graduates who achieve Permanent Residence status in Australia and are actively searching for jobs in the nominated occupation for migration.
Continuous supply of graduates who achieve Temporary Residence status in Australia and are actively searching for jobs in the nominated occupation for migration. Majority of them intend to stay in Australia permanently.
Studyandwork.com.au helps them take the first step to start a successful journey of employment in Australia.
Recent media stories concerning international students
Learning boom amid the economic gloom
Luke Slattery | The Australian April 01, 2009
AUSTRALIA'S export education industry grew 42 per cent in the three years to 2008, employs 126,000 people and contributes 1per cent of the nation's gross domestic product, according to an Access Economics report.
The report, to be released today, is the first to synthesise all available data on the economic contribution of international students to the Australian economy.
It finds that the total impact of the export industry on the economy, once the "value-added" effect of $12.6 billion is added to direct expenditure by overseas students and their families of $14.1 billion, exceeds $26.7 million. Commissioned by the Australian Council for Private Education and Training, it confirms that the education sector is the nation's third biggest export earner behind coal and iron ore, outperforming travel, services (professional, business and technical), as well as exports of gold, crude petroleum and aluminium.
The report found that every dollar spent on education by an international student in Australia contributed an additional $1.91 to the economy.
International student activity is estimated to have contributed just more than 122,000 full-time equivalent employees to the economy in 2007-08, it says. "Of these, 33,482 were employed in the education sector and 88,649 in other related sectors."
ACPET national executive officer Andrew Smith confirmed to the HES yesterday that enrolments in private colleges were holding firm this year and in some cases rising amid the recession. "While a number of other industries are contracting, this is one that is going from strength to strength," he said. "It is important to the Australian economy that this is recognised."
Mr Smith described the export education sector, comprising public and private providers, as "a booming industry and one of our strongest defences against global recession". For every four overseas students to enter the country, a job was created.
The Access Economics report found that in 2007-08 more than 21,000 overseas students were granted residency under various visa class applications.
It predicts that a 5 per cent reduction in overseas student numbers would cause 6300 Australians to lose their jobs as the economy lost more than $600million in export revenue.
Australian education providers also earned $438 million from overseas campuses and consultancy services, bringing total income for the sector to $14.1billion. Of $13.7 billion spent by overseas students in 2007-08, more than $6.4 billion went on education fees and $4.3 billion on food and accommodation. The report found that Australia, with less than 1 per cent of the world's population, enrolled 7.5 per cent of the world's international students.
Overall, the international enrolments of private sector providers grew by 92.6 per cent from 2006 to 2007. The highest growth was experienced in Victoria, where the sector increased by almost 250 per cent.
This compares with growth of only 7.7 per cent between 2006 and 2008 in the number of overseas students in higher education, suggesting that "the sector has reached a mature growth phase compared with other sectors of the education market".
The English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students and vocational education and training sectors, in contrast, experienced a surge in growth during the period, with enrolments increasing by 63.7 per cent and 112.6 per cent respectively.
Mr Smith added that the importance of the export education industry could not be measured solely in economic terms.
"Education makes an enormous contribution to the students who come here to study, and to their communities when they return and take an Australian education home," he said.
IDP Education chief executive Tony Pollock said the report showed that international education was important to the students who came to Australia and the Australian economy.
"International education is a high-value, knowledge industry (that) creates jobs in Australia and, as a nation, we have proved we are very good at it," he said.
TAFE Directors Australia chief executive Martin Riordan said vocational students accounted for almost half the overseas students, and showed heftier spending on a government campaign to shore up recruitment of overseas students was justified.
Mr Riordan also warned that a critical lack of student housing needed to be addressed.
Foreigners are 'exploited'
Milanda Rout | February 06, 2008 (The Australian)
CONTRARY to their image as cashed-up BMW drivers, many overseas students cannot afford to eat, are paid well below the minimum wage and are among those most vulnerable to exploitation in this country, new research says.
More than one-third of overseas students struggle financially and about 60 per cent are paid less than the legal minimum wage, according to the research.
The alarming findings come as education overtakes tourism as the nation's biggest services export, increasing by a huge 21 per cent in 2007 to $12.5 billion. The number of international student enrolments rose 18 per cent on the previous year to more than 450,000, the latest figures show.
The authors of the joint Monash University and University of Melbourne studies slammed universities for treating foreign students like "cash cows", and criticised the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee (now known as Universities Australia) for failing to include overseas students in a recent student welfare study.
They wrote that "many internationals are disadvantaged by their relative deficit of language and cultural skills, they are crowded into a narrower range of jobs than is available to their domestic peers, and they commonly offset these disadvantages by working for less than the legal (minimum)".
The two papers, one on international students in the workforce and the other on the financial difficulties faced by overseas students, were based on interviews with 200 students at nine universities across Australia.
The researchers found that almost 60 per cent of students earned below the minimum wage and 37per cent had experienced financial hardship, including not having enough money to travel to university or even eat.
"I had a very hard time finding a job. (For the) first two months I was unemployed," one 36-year-old Indian student told researchers. "My rent is very high - it's $120 a week - and other than that you have travelling, eating, everything.
"So I starved."
The researchers discovered 70 per cent of international students worked at some stage during their studies in Australia and a number admitted to working more than the maximum 20 hours allowed by their study visas.
"Of the students who reported their hourly rate, 58 per cent earned between $7 and $15 per hour at a time when the legal minimum for a casual waiter was $16.08 an hour and the rate for a casual shop assistant was $17.97 per hour," the study states.
Conducted by Simon Marginson, Chris Nyland, Erlenawati Sawir, Gaby Ramia and Helen Forbes-Mewett, the research also found foreign students were more likely to be exploited because of their lack of English skills and ignorance of workplace rights. The researchers called for urgent action by governments and universities.
They urged better education for international students about their workplace rights and better investigations by workplace authorities to expose the injustices experienced by working overseas students.
Professor Nyland and his colleagues wrote that the decision by UA not to include overseas students in its finances study "sadly lends credence to the much repeated claim that Australian university managers view international students primarily as customers who exist to be milked".
But UA chief executive Glenn Withers rejected the claim that tertiary institutions treated international students like cash cows and don't care about their welfare.
He defended the decision not to include international students in their student finances survey, saying that that survey was targeted at the federal government to try to improve income support for domestic students.
Dr Withers said universities were helping overseas students where they could by providing support services and going into public-private partnerships to construct accommodation for students close to campuses.
"The biggest problems are the exchange rate - and universities cannot control that - and expensive housing, and universities cannot control that either," he said.
Education trumps tourism
Milanda Rout | February 06, 2008 (The Australian)
EDUCATION has replaced tourism as Australia's biggest services export and become the country's third top export overall, trailing behind only coal and iron ore production.
But the $12.5 billion generated by 450,000 international students last year comes amid serious concerns for their welfare, as new research reveals more than a third are struggling financially.
Researchers from Monash University and the University of Melbourne found some foreign students could not afford to eat properly and that more than half were exploited in their part-time jobs, being paid below the minimum wage.
The authors of the study also take aim at university chiefs, saying they treat overseas students "primarily as customers who exist to be milked" and that urgent action is needed to protect these "vulnerable" workers.
The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show revenue from education exports increased by 21per cent last year, to $12.5billion, eclipsing the tourism industry, which brought in $11.5billion.
The top export was coal, which generated $20.8billion, followed by iron ore, worth $16billion.
Leading international education agent IDP said more than 450,000 overseas students were enrolled in Australian schools, universities and TAFEs last year, up 18 per cent on 2006.
IDP Education chief executive Tony Pollock said the fastest growing area for international students in this country was in TAFE and English language courses.
China was the country with the most students coming to Australian universities, followed by India, South Korea, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
"Education is a bigger drawcard for visitors to Australia than Uluru, the Great Barrier Reef and all other tourist attractions put together," Mr Pollock said.
"Nearly half a million people are living in Australia who would not be here if we stopped education for international students. All these people and their dependants are living in Australia and purchasing their food, transport, accommodation and other daily needs in Australia. The flow-on effect to the economy is enormous."
But Monash University's Chris Nyland said it was appalling that data were collected on the spending habits of international students but there were no statistics on their income.
He said he and his colleagues interviewed 200 foreign students at nine universities and found more than a third struggled to make ends meet. "There are some that come from affluent families but people don't appreciate how poor lots of these kids are," Professor Nyland said. "I think they are treated as cash cows."
Universities Australia chief executive Glenn Withers said institutions were not responsible for the extra costs faced by foreign students.
"The biggest problems are the exchange rate, and universities cannot control that, and expensive housing, and universities cannot control that either," Dr Withers said.
He said the growth in overseas student numbers pointed to the quality of the education on offer. "We would like to see it continue to grow but it should be accompanied by an increase in government funding for core activities at universities."
Migrant intake just right: business
Siobhain Ryan | February 06, 2008 (The Australian)
BUSINESS has backed Australia's current level of immigration, despite a call for the intake to jump by more than a quarter by 2021.
A new Academy of Social Sciences in Australia paper yesterday said the nation needed to bring in 227,000 people a year by 2021, up from 177,600 last year, if it was to fill the growing gap in local supplies of labour.
But Business Council of Australia policy director Patrick Coleman said his organisation put the country's future need for workers from abroad at closer to 175,000 a year.
"Over recent years, there have been increases in the permanent migration level and we're now at the point where the migration level is broadly in line with where we've asked for it to be," he said.
Australian National University demographer Peter McDonald, co-author of the paper, said the Rudd Government's "education revolution" alone could not provide the skilled labour needed.
"The domestic supply of labour will be inadequate for the demand, even with migration running at its present level, which is very high," he said.
The other author of the paper was Glenn Withers, who headed the Economic Planning Advisory Commission under the previous Labor government.
The entry of baby boomers and more women into the workforce has, together with migration, kept average annual growth in the labour force at 1.9 per cent since 1980. But the ageing of the population and the high number of women in the workforce meant the room for further growth in participation was shrinking, Professor McDonald said.
The growth rate had slipped to 1.2 per cent by 2006 and would plummet to 0.7 per cent by 2021 unless the intake of foreign workers increased, he estimated.
By 2051, Australia's annual immigration level would have to double on current levels, to 316,000, to meet demand.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry's Peter Anderson said Australia generally had its immigration policy right.
"I think constructive suggestions should be considered - no radical changes needed, but fine-tuning," he said.
Migrants beating locals to new jobs
George Megalogenis and Paige Taylor | The Australian February 28, 2008
MIGRANTS secured more than half of the 240,000 full-time jobs created over the past 12 months as employers ran out of qualified local-born people to fill job vacancies.
Overseas-born Australians enjoy a lower unemployment rate than their local-born counterparts -- 4.4 per cent to 4.6 per cent. The advantage is greater still for English-speaking migrants from New Zealand, Britain and Ireland, who all boast unemployment rates with a three in front of them.
The latest official data explodes the myth of the ethnic welfare bludger and warns, instead, that the Australian-born are more likely to form the bulk of the nation's underclass because those locals who remain out of work don't appear to have the necessary skills.
Employers are increasingly relying on new arrivals from Britain, China and India, as well as more established immigrant groups such as New Zealanders and Southeast Asians.
The overseas-born claimed 129,700, or 53.9 per cent, of the 240,500 full-time jobs created in the 12 months to January.
Migrants account for just 28.6per cent of the nation's working age population, according to the detailed breakdowns that the Australian Bureau of Statistics releases after the monthly labour force survey.
Of those who remained unemployed last month, the Australian-born numbered 374,100 compared with 127,900 for the overseas-born. Migrants represent just 25.5 per cent of the total unemployed.
Hairdresser Vanessa McCartney, 41, already had work lined up when her plane from London touched down in Perth last July.
She left that job seven months later and was rehired the same day by a salon in the northern Perth suburb of Innaloo.
"Not having to struggle to get work has taken the stress out of moving countries," Ms McCartney said yesterday.
Finding an experienced, eager worker such as Ms McCartney was a relief for Bossanova Hair Studio owner Vera Caminiti, who said it had never been more difficult to find staff in her 25 years in the industry.
Ms McCartney's husband, Mark, a refrigeration mechanic who ran his own business in southeast London, started work on the couple's third day in Australia.
British- and Irish-born migrants have an unemployment rate of 3.4 per cent, almost half the 6.5 per cent of six years ago.
The near-full employment economy is challenging stereotypes. Non-English-speaking groups that suffered double-digit unemployment a few years ago have seen those rates tumble.
The unemployment rate for the Vietnamese-born has been slashed from 14.1 per cent in January 2002 to 4.6 per cent last month, driven mostly by a surge in part-time work. The rate for the Lebanese-born fell from 15per cent to 9per cent over the same period.
The only groups to remain in double digits last month were from North Africa and the Middle East, on 12.2 per cent.
Six years ago, Kiwis were among our least employable migrants - their unemployment rate was 8.7 per cent, compared with 8.2 per cent for all overseas-born, and 7.3 per cent for the Australian-born. Last month, the New Zealand-born unemployed rate was down to 3.6 per cent, compared with 4.4 per cent for immigrants generally and 4.6 per cent for the Australia-born.
