While John Howard Checks on English Competence of Overseas Students, Manmohan Singh Looks into India's Decline in Science. (January 29, 2007)

Bob Birrell

    Monash University's Demographer Bob Birrell, Director of the Centre for Population and Urban Research gets himself into the popular media every so often when he publishes a report based on research of the Centre indicating short comings in Australia's higher education sector.

Today he has made news with his findings that  34% of graduating students who were offered permanent residence visas last year were unable to achieve a "competent" English standard in their test scores. Among Chinese students, the figure was as high as 43.2%, while more than half of South Korean and Thai students could not meet required English levels.

Dr Birrell, who reports his findings in the current issue of People and Places told The Sydney Morning Herald's Harriet Alexander, "It does raise serious questions about Australian university standards," said Professor Birrell, a Monash University academic and author of the report, published in today's People and Place journal. "How do they get in in the first place? The next [question] is, how do they get through university exams with poor English? We've got mountains of anecdotal data from individual lecturers complaining and people expressing concern [about standards], but this is the first time that confirms those concerns are correct."

Professor Peter Abelson, a visiting scholar at the University of Sydney, said, "[These figures] are a very stunning result, but not entirely surprising to people who are in tertiary education."

Professor Gerard Sutton, the president of the Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee, told Ms Alexander, "I don't accept that there's a problem in universities in terms of soft marking of international students."

Previous reports from Dr Birrell and his Centre have warned,

• "the government's training policies have "contributed to serious shortages of university-trained professionals",¹

• that Australia's prosperity is clearly not delivering dividends in the education and training that the country needs. "Debate on this issue has been muddied by the assertions of some Coalition Government leaders that past training priorities in Australia have involved excessive emphasis on higher education at the expense of trade training,²

• that "Severe shortages of professional engineers are now evident in Australia. Yet the Australian Government has shown no interest in expanding domestic training levels."³

So far there has been little evidence that Dr Birrell's analyses have elicited any government interest of consequence.

For example in July 2006 the Department of Education, Science and Training published Audit of science, engineering & technology skills which warns on pp 32-33:

For science professionals, the model predicts a total increase in demand (defined as the change in total demand from year to year plus replacement demand) from 2004–05 to 2012–13 of around 55,000 (Table 4.1). When compared to projections of total supply from higher education, demand is not expected to exceed total supply of science graduates.
 

However, supply is predicted to be reduced significantly by many graduates choosing not to work full-time.
For example, the Graduate Careers Council data indicates graduates may elect to study further, in related or unrelated fields, or may have family responsibilities. In addition, Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data shows that even at graduation, many graduates elect to work in areas unrelated to their studies and this proportion tends to increase over time. These predictions indicate that available supply may total only 35,981,leaving a possible shortfall of about 35 per cent (Table 4.2).

So far the government has made no useful response to the report's warning as indicated by a News and Views item in TFW on October 19, 2006:

On July 19, the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Julie Bishop in addressing the Sydney Institute referred to Australia suffering a likely short-fall of as much as 35% in its estimated requirement of 55,000 additional scientific professionals (just over 19,000 individuals) within six years. How to overcome the shortfall; is India an answer?

 

She suggested that she was dealing with the matter and went on to tell the Sydney Institute, "...CSIRO will increase its investment in its early to mid career researchers with an additional 40 new postdoctoral fellows and an additional 10 new CSIRO Science Leaders. The CSIRO Science Leader Scheme is directed to high performing scientists with between 5 and 10 years post-doctoral experience. This increased investment  will amount to $18.3 million over three years and provide important career  opportunities to Australian researchers."

 

No, CSIRO wasn't to get additional funding it would divert the funds in its current allocation to this initiative.

 

And earlier this month the Prime Minister, John Howard, announced that over four years $56 million would be allocated for 500 additional Commonwealth-supported places in engineering courses at Australian universities.

 

What was that figure for the estimated shortfall? No doubt about it "the country's in the very best of hands".

In response to the new report the Prime Minister, John Howard, told Southern Cross Radio this morning he would investigate the research and determine the extent of the problem. "I will be getting some advice from the vice-chancellors and be getting some advice from my education minister [Julie Bishop] as to how accurate they and she believe the research to be. Bob Birrell is a very good researcher, he's got quite a reputation when it comes to immigration and demography, but I'd like to look below the headline of that research before saying other than that, on the face of it, it's concerning."

But perhaps not of sufficient concern for Mr Howard to want to read the report or talk to Dr Birrell.

In the meantime Ms Bishop, in one of her firing from the hip statements, speaking to Radio Australia has rejected claims that a large number of foreign students graduating from Australian universities have poor English skills and says Australian universities only enrol foreign students once they have achieved international standards of language proficiency. "This has been an extraordinary attack by Professor Birrell on our universities, Ms Bishop said, "International students must meet international benchmarks in English language in order to get a place at a university in Australia."

Of course Ms Bishop would be fully aware that Dr Birrell's report in pointing out how dependent our universities are for income from full fee paying foreign student enrolments places them them in an increasingly invidious position as regards withholding degrees from them.

Manmohan Singh

On the other hand the Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, is reported by Nature to have called for India's scientists to raise their game in return for increased funding, without deigning to institute a Research Quality Framework.

He told the 94^th Indian Science Congress meeting in Chidambaram at the beginning of the year, "While our government will do its utmost to invest in science, I call upon the scientific community to also invest its time and intellectual energy in the revitalization of our science institutions," and went on to admonish them saying he was "deeply concerned" about declining enrolment in basic sciences, and that the decaying university system "needs upgrading in a massive way".

Nature's K. S. Jayaraman went on to report, "he said he was most troubled by, 'the decline in the standards of our research work in universities and even in advanced research institutes'. For example, the return on billions of rupees invested in alternative energy sources was inadequate. 'Be it [hydropower], thermal or nuclear power, we have to improve the productivity of investments already made.' To raise quality, Singh warned that he may submit India's research labs to international peer review."

"In the past year our government has launched three new research institutions," Prime Minister Singh told his audience, adding that the government is considering creating more. He also vowed to increase annual expenditure on science and technology from less than 1% of gross domestic product to 2% over the next five years.

But the PM's science adviser, the distinguished chemist C. N. R. Rao who heads the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research in Bangalore, made the point that attracting and keeping scientists is tough when companies offer up to six times the salary of government labs: "In two years, I lost eight of my postdocs to the General Electric Company research centre next door."

Perhaps Mr Howard should suggest to Dr Singh, an economist by training, to become preoccupied with a research quality framework. It won't improve Indian research but it will take his mind off actually doing anything constructive about it.