Australian international education is on its knees because of our closed borders – and competitors are circling. England and America would love to claw back the flow of Asian students for whom Australian degrees and other qualifications have become the dream in the last 20-30 years.

We should use today’s malaise as an opportunity to get the settings sorted for this unique export. International education is a vexed topic in Australia. It should not be, and it need not be. As a nation, we actually need all the exports we can get – and what could be more benign than educating overseas students?

The critics see crowded classes – and there is no doubt that some Australian students do feel swamped by internationals whose English is poor and who cannot pull their weight in syndicates and workshops. In addition, there is in our community an apparently ineradicable – though fundamentally incorrect – belief that international students take university places away from locals.

None of the problems is the fault of international education as such. Institutional action can resolve them. None of them seriously detracts from international education as a great and relatively new Aussie export.

Supporters of international education have varied reasons for believing in it. Profitability is of course fundamentally important when considering it as an export. In business terms, international education certainly needs to be profitable. It must not be a drag on our community or our governments. In recent years, export education has generated unbelievable revenues – $34b in 2019.

There is no doubt that well run Australian international education enterprises can and do make good profits. One feature that often contributes to profitability is fees being paid up front. Some 1,500 institutions are registered as international education providers around Australia.

Importantly, there is scope for scale in international education without detracting from the educational experience of Australian students. Scale is often problematic for Australian industries because of our small population. Education is different, because we attract students from many countries. This means that the internationals need not be ‘leavened’ by a few Australians in every class, because students from several overseas countries can provide the requisite diversity. The significance of this is confirmed by the fact that a number of Australian export education programs only cater to international students.

International education certainly has vulnerabilities. The current border closures are an obvious example. And nobody should forget – though few Australians were aware of it – that Australia closed its border to Chinese students for almost the whole of the 1990s following the Tianenmen Square events. Of course all exports have vulnerabilities: the challenge is to manage them. Who knows whether border closures are worse for international education than droughts are for our meat or wheat or wool exports? It is certainly clear that ongoing evolution and innovation will be required in education in coming decades, and that a range of qualitative educational imperatives will need to be accommodated.

Some supporters of international education focus on its role in raising Australia’s standing in Asia, in strengthening our ties with neighbouring peoples, and in contributing to political stability and economic prosperity throughout our region. These are deeply significant impacts and contributions in today’s uncertain world.

International education is also supported by many people and institutions who are moved by a humanitarian impulse to help educate the millions of young Asians who have the dream to study in Australia. This group includes realists as well as idealists. It includes many Australian teachers who love the opportunity to teach truly dedicated students.

Nobody should doubt that the dream of an education in Australia is real in Asia, or that it is widespread. It is a deeply moving reality in countries where education is in short – or artificially limited – supply. When working in international education, I once asked a young applicant from Hong Kong who seemed clever but whose results were marginal what he could say to convince me that he would ‘work his butt off’ if I offered him a place. He realised this was a serious moment in his life. I could see he was thinking hard. After a pause he looked me in the eye and answered ‘I want to come because I do not want my life to vanish without a trace’. Here was genuine motivation, born of grim reality. I am happy to record that he took full advantage of the place I offered by going on to qualify for university and completing a commerce degree at the University of Melbourne.

There is no doubt that some overseas applicants want to end up living in Australia, and some try to ‘put it over’ recruiters. But the dream for most is to get an Australian education so they can make a better life for themselves and their families when they go back home to their own countries.

As a nation, we should become better acquainted with international education as a major export which supports our national prosperity and ways of life. All Australians know, and have always known, that we supply other countries with wool and wheat and other agricultural products, and with steel and coal and gold and other mineral products. But few of us have twigged that Australia is also a major supplier of education to other countries.

The famous Thai humanitarian, Khun Mechai Viravaidya – who at 80 years of age still features on the Tatler’s list of ‘Asia’s Most Influential’ – once said at an international forum at The University of Melbourne:

‘Education is the most valuable thing that any one country can provide to any other country’.

This statement contains enduring and priceless truth. Several conclusions follow from it. Viravaidya himself used it to support an argument that educational institutions should not apologise for charging high fees!

A conclusion that Australians may draw from Viravaidya’s statement is that education is perhaps the finest of exports – it is certainly one of the finest. Not only is it high value, and not only is it not a case of ‘selling the farm’. It does no damage, and virtually everyone believes in it.

Further, there are no shipping or other export costs for us to carry in order to deliver the product. Students mostly come here to get it – and there is a multiplier, because they also support our student housing industry. Then the parents come to visit and see their children graduate, so we receive further value in tourism. A further step has also already been taken: the children of former international students are now starting to come to study here!

Not only is education a great export in itself – Australia is also really good at it. Overseas students love to study in Australia – the evidence is overwhelming in the growing numbers who have come here in recent years. We have actually been providing international education for more than 70 years, first through the famous Colombo plan which brought 40,000 Asian students here between 1950 and 1985, and since then with the current fee-paying arrangements which have brought hundreds of thousands of students. One thing that makes us good at educating students from Asia is that we encourage them to be flexible. Another is that the egalitarian Australian style helps our international students to acquire a relaxed self-confidence. Australians should be proud of the quality and value of our educational products.

So how can Australia make the most of its opportunities as an exporter of education? How can we make it a source of national pride? How can we put to rest the doubts and discontent which continue to swirl around it? How can we enable our international students to come back, both in the Covid19 era and beyond?

There are two fundamental imperatives – in effect strategies – which point the way forward for the industry. Education being what it is, all providers have unique moral responsibilities, and each needs to find its own way to reinvigorate its market. At the post-secondary level, it will largely fall to our universities and technological institutions, to take the lead in bringing international education back to life. Pilot schemes will be the order of the day in the current environment. It has been heartening in recent weeks to read of industry-led schemes designed to enable overseas students to return while keeping Covid19 out.

The first imperative is for the international education industry to take responsibility for securing its own future and its own success. Some educational institutions have had a historic tendency to look to government for financial underpinning. We are now in a different era. To be sure, government needs to enact and apply appropriate rules, and approve relevant arrangements. Particularly with younger students, these need to include transport, accommodation and living arrangements as well as safe and sound educational environments. The institutions cannot expect government to put its hand into its pocket to pay for these things. The institutions have for many years had a free hand to set the level of overseas student fees, and it is up to them to cover their own costs including capital requirements going forwards.

The second imperative is for our education providers to put the students first. This means engaging with the students, and finding ways to treat them as individuals. It means being responsive to what students want and what they need. It means giving them time. It means prioritising teaching, and limiting class sizes.

It is easy for education institutions to become inward looking, to focus their attention on themselves. If Australia’s international education industry is to go from strength to strength, it will need to put the students first. It appears – at least to outsiders – that some institutions may emphasise their own standing at the expense of doing the best by their students. For example, rankings – which are surely oriented more to marketing than true quality – appear at times to receive inordinate attention.

Putting the students first, particularly in university education, means giving them priority in terms of their learning; their attainment of worthwhile knowledge and understanding; and securing capacity as well as degrees and qualifications. Putting the students first must surely include ensuring that top staff, particularly in universities, are involved in teaching.

Perhaps the litmus test of whether institutions put their students first is whether students carry away unforgettable memories of one or two teachers or tutors or lecturers or professors who had a transforming impact – on their lives, their thinking, or whatever. This is a challenging test in the digital era, but it is surely legitimate. Even in the largest institutions with the most advanced technology, students – in particular international students who have had the courage and the commitment to come to study in our country – must be afforded individuality at a level that counts.