OPINION:
"Welcome to the United States, Mr. Christoffersen," The US border Immigration Official said with a big, warm smile. "When are you leaving?"
I've always admired the forthright politeness of the US Immigration Service. They leave you in no doubt about your status. The brutal honesty regarding my arrival in the US is always refreshing.
If only it applied in New Zealand and to the tertiary sector's push into the international market.
It was once described as "internationalisation". The aim was to broaden New Zealand's academic base and seek a footprint as a tertiary provider beyond these isolated shores. Today, all that is gone. It's about money, and the international student sector is simply seen as a cash cow. Tertiary education is an export commodity and there's no disguising the commercial intent behind the higher ideals of the language of academia.
The new language of international student recruitment was the first giveaway that any feigning of academic rigour and internationalisation for the benefit of scholarship and academic standing is now over. Waikato University's pro vice chancellor (international), Associate Professor Ed Weymes, summed it up earlier this year.
"Ten to 15 years ago, international students were the icing on the cake. Today they are a significant contributor to the university's financial objectives and budgets."
Weymes is correct. The crutch that now stands under most higher education institutes, and many high schools, is there to stay. The reliance on international student revenue streams is critical to academic survival in a crowded market.
The lack of language focusing on academic outcomes from government and senior academic staff while pursuing international recruits is telling and significant. The tertiary sector goalposts have moved. Without the international bums on classroom seats, tertiary budgets would be millions short, with the Waikato economy alone benefiting to the tune of $1.21 million annually (and $2.5 billion nationally).
But the new language of the tertiary sector is as revealing as my first encounter with US border control. It's very clinical, with no room for academic sentiment or vision, as it seeks to capture the market of students who are willing to travel to get a tertiary qualification. The payback is, in theory, at least both immediate and long term.
Much work is going into enhancing their local experience, so word of mouth can be added to the marketing mix back home for further student recruitment at tertiary fairs. Local committees are now established, engaging tertiary and high-school sectors in a joint bid to make Hamilton a more attractive study choice. But it's not about education - it's about lifestyle. The sector is now engaging in a mix of education and entertainment to secure student enrolments. Higher education is now about edu-tainment for students new to New Zealand.
But like so much of New Zealand, when the government sees cash, and it wants to play the free market from education to broadcasting to construction to finance, it goes for the gold ring without the necessary checks and balances to ensure that the gold rush doesn't have negative effects. And there are negative effects, but the sector is reluctant to acknowledge them publicly.
Academic staff within the tertiary sector know they're pushing the limit. The pushback from domestic students to the overpopulation of classrooms by international students is only constrained by a couple of key factors. The students are young, and don't have the confidence to say anything negative about their learning experience, and the political correctness within New Zealand society will see any claim of too many foreigners in our classes as racism.
But it's not about international students as people, or necessarily about their imported culture. It's about language and learning. The IELTS standards are low and many students who arrive are exposed to full-time English language for the first time.
The domestic student pushback is coming, and will take the form of backroom discussions first, before some brave student says what everyone in the sector knows: My education is being compromised by international students who don't understand English well enough to contribute confidently or coherently in class.
The limited research I've read into the impact of international students on the New Zealand tertiary sector confirms that there is a degree of accommodation by domestic students towards international students. But there is a growing undercurrent of local dissatisfaction as fees climb and the corporatisation and commercialisation of the domestic student experience increases.
Kiwi students are now demanding quality, uncompromised education. And they're not getting it when local classrooms can be populated up to 95 percent by international imports. Business studies is a popular destination, and I have taught in classrooms where local students numbered three alongside 38 imports. The pace of learning in that class was slow, pastoral care demand high and the outcomes low as many students struggled with the culture of study and the New Zealand-based case studies and business anecdotes.
Domestic students are routinely used in classes and study groups as unpaid English-as-second-language teachers to the students imported from abroad. What starts out as a novelty of shared cultures soon turns to resentment, as locals feel the pace of learning slows to accommodate international students struggling with study demands.
The harsh truth is that you don't get international students for free. Along with the imports of academic flesh and blood is the import of culture. Not all of it positive and not all of it worthy of the high ideals of tertiary internationalisation.
Academic colleagues raised the spectre of imported violence aimed at academic staff. Many of us knew it was only a matter of time before a tertiary tutor was injured or killed at the hands of a foreign student. The pressure to succeed, the financial investment and family pressures from home all create a loaded environment, with little wriggle room for international students who are failing. And the real concern is that at Wintec, nearly a third of them are. Given that some international students are paying nearly $30,000 for a master's qualification, the pressure to finish and qualify is overwhelming, particularly when that qualification is in a second language.
Today I see international student importation as a growing cancer on the quality of New Zealand tertiary education. It's metastasising at an alarming rate and the Government is so keen to convince overseas markets that New Zealand welcomes their young people that it is now time to speak out and say that our standards of tertiary education are at risk. International students themselves didn't sign up to sit alongside 35 other international students in a New Zealand classroom. Nor do locals.
This is not tertiary internationalisation. It is tertiary commercial Asianisation. The vast bulk of students are coming from Asia, and let's be clear: the reason international students come to New Zealand isn't because they like us. They are here because they can't get into their home countries, they can't get into Australia, they can't get into the US, they can't get into Canada and they can't get into the UK.
But they can get into New Zealand. We will take their money and in so doing, prop up the tertiary sector and provide students with qualifications that will open doors to the countries they do want to study in.
And when they are there, they will find our undergraduate standards of academic rigour are low. As New Zealand's global academic rankings decline, it is time to ask if New Zealand is locked into a state-funded culture of quantity v quality - with quantity the preferred factor of tertiary achievement.
The solution is to cap the numbers of international students in New Zealand. They are being used by the government to fund an oversupply of institutions and courses, and the growth is only going to further reduce the standards in our tertiary centres. The solution is to stop the over-reliance on the international student market, and that means reducing the size and duplication of courses in the New Zealand tertiary sector.
The academic year is now drawing to a close, and much of the work for next year has been done to attract new overseas students to our shores. Academic institutions will be ticking the financial benchmarks as enrolment numbers are confirmed and another year of financial survival is assured.
So here's a warm and hearty welcome to New Zealand for international students.
When are you leaving?
Christoffersen is "acting like he's out of the Ark", says Steven Joyce.