Australia risks antagonising its neighbours by allowing a ¡°myopic¡± focus on its internal skills needs to govern its educational offerings to foreigners, a Canberra conference has heard.

International Education Association of Australia (IEAA)?chief executive?Phil Honeywood warned against a policy drive to usher international students into fields like engineering, information technology and allied health ¨C areas where local employers struggled to find appropriately skilled people.

¡°We have to be really careful we don¡¯t get tunnel vision about what Australia needs,¡± Honeywood told the Australian International Education Conference, co-hosted by IEAA. ¡°We should be providing world-class qualifications to the majority of international students who go home, and note the skills that they want.¡±

Honeywood said advanced economies had a ¡°global responsibility¡± to meet the often ¡°totally different¡± skills needs of poorer nations, particularly their neighbours. ¡°If we don¡¯t do that, then other countries I won¡¯t name¡­are going to be more than willing,¡± he warned.

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He said Australia was well placed to help address skills gaps in south-east Asia, in areas like environmental remediation and ¡°different health challenges to those in Australia¡±.

A focus on internal skills needs also risked fuelling ¡°brain drain¡± from developing countries ¨C and justified complaints from their leaders: ¡°You advanced countries¡­are taking the best and brightest of our young people, offering them migration increasingly based on your skill needs [and] not sending them back.¡±

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While local skills requirements influence foreign graduates¡¯ eligibility for residency and the length of their post-study work rights, policymakers are increasingly pushing for Australian skills shortages to shape course offerings to overseas students.

A recent Jobs and Skills Australia report recommended that work-integrated learning and English language training be made a ¡°core element of study offerings¡±, to boost the local employability of international students.

The federal government¡¯s proposal to cap international enrolments included a mechanism to ban the delivery of courses on various grounds, including their ¡°limited value to Australia¡¯s skills needs¡±. While the caps never proceeded, the government¡¯s newly proposed integrity reforms would empower the education and skills ministers to suspend or cancel courses on similar grounds.

Melissa Banks, a former IEAA president and pro vice-chancellor of James Cook University, said a focus on Australian needs was sensible. ¡°Students who have chosen to¡­study in Australia, who are trained and educated in Australia to Australian standards ¨C why wouldn¡¯t we want them to be our future talent and satisfy our future skills needs?¡±

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But Banks said the primary focus should be on students¡¯ needs, wherever they intended to live. ¡°At the end of the day, students don¡¯t just want jobs, they¡­want careers. We¡¯ve got to set them up and enable them. It¡¯s about the attributes of the graduates and how we foster those for success in the workplace.¡±

Stephanie Smith, Austrade¡¯s head of education for China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, said around 86 per cent of globetrotting Chinese students ended up returning to home soil. ¡°They potentially don¡¯t have the industry connections and local networks that the domestic students [have].¡±

Smith said it was incumbent on Australian institutions to ensure that their graduates were employable domestically. ¡°You have to be forging internship opportunities for them in the mainland, finding industry partnerships and really supporting them [around] how they [are] going to get a job back in China.¡±

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com