At present there is plenty of debate in the national arena on how to fund our university education.  An investigation by Four Corners has unearthed evidence of a decline in academic standards at our universities.  There is a pressure on lecturers and tutors to pass students who are failing to meet minimal requirements.  The reason for this decline in standards is due to lack of government funding and the corruption in enrolment with overseas students.  Four Corners reported that 50% of RMIT University students are full fee-paying overseas students.

Many of the overseas students don’t have the level of English needed to successfully study a degree.  I’ve seen evidence of this in one of my classes when an overseas student made simple grammatical errors in their project for everyone to see.  The corruption also thrives in the overseas agents who recruit the students on the universities behalf.  There has been reports of fake qualifications used to make applications.  There has also been accusations of overseas students using these agencies to undertake visa fraud.  But with universities now dependent on incomes recieved from foreign students, it looks like the problem isn’t going away anytime soon.

bibliography – Linton Besser, 2015, Degrees of Deception,

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2015/04/20/4217741.htm