That will depend on lots of things that we don’t control and it depends on how Australia reacts to what other countries do.
There is growing competition in the education game!
Demand depends on policy on foreign investment in the education sector in the home countries of our international students, for instance. It depends on their ambitions to become an education exporter rather than importer.
It depends on the conditions those students face when they leave their home country.
It depends on our own policy applied to students who visit us, for example, the extent to which they can work while they study, what is the cost of their kids education while they are studying, and if and how they can migrate to Australia afterwards.
And it depends on other supplier-country policies, on migration for example.
Kent Anderson in these pages talked about Japan’s ambitions for immigration.
He says Japan is talking about taking in a community equal to half the Australian population. But where from? Migration by nurses from the Philippines or returning Japanese families from Latin America? In part yes, but not all. A big part is going to be recruited from international students in the Japanese education system.
The US, like us, is already doing that.
So stand by for tough competition in the international student market, from ambitious home countries that see the value in developing their tertiary sectors, and from ageing developed countries who want to capture skills.
A big story for regional economic cooperation will be how these tensions in the emerging market for higher education are resolved, This will be the brain drain debate in an Asia Pacific frame.
The result for Australia will depend on what we do and what other countries do. It’ll also depend on the commitments we make on these policies in the WTO and in bilateral and regional agreements and what we ask other countries to commit to.
And it’ll depend on whether we can differentiate ourselves, for example, by being good research mates with the home countries of our current or prospective international students.
This is all about trade, investment and migration policy. It matters for education policy. It’s a perspective which is important for the tertiary sector and there’s not enough of it in the Discussion paper.