Academics say universities have turned a blind eye to language shortcomings because of the revenue generated from international student fees
In the first part of a Guardian series, academics say universities have turned a blind eye to language shortcomings because of the revenue generated from international student feesMore than a dozen academics and students who spoke to Guardian Australia, most on the condition of anonymity, said the universities’ financial reliance on foreign students over many years had hollowed out academic integrity and threatened the international credibility of the sector.
“It’s mind blowing that you can walk away with a master’s degree in a variety of subjects without being able to understand a sentence.”, of which the largest is the International English Language Testing System , which costs a minimum of $445 to sit. It is owned by the $3.5bn student recruitment company IDP Education, the “leading education and migration agents in Australia”.
Sign up for Guardian Australia’s free morning and afternoon email newsletters for your daily news roundup “It breaks my heart reading essay after essay with a strong suspicion students couldn’t have written it,” they said. “The writing is on par with mine but when I ask what a citation and a reference is, they have no idea.
“Flinders does not admit students into courses for which they are not qualified,” the spokesperson said. Khan Lewanay, an international student who has spent more than a decade in Australia, said the universities’ willingness to push through students with poor English language skills led to poor outcomes for all concerned.
“In one project, a member only wrote one sentence of poorly translated gibberish which wasn’t on topic,” they said. “When I first arrived, I struggled with understanding the academic expectations here,” they said. “Without that support , I would have fallen behind.”
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