Emails show Australian academics' despair over struggling international students

[Mighty AU]

A chain of internal emails shows senior academics at Murdoch University had warned the university for months about underprepared international students struggling to pass courses.

Several academics at the university wrote to each other in November last year describing the steps they had taken to warn Murdoch's management about the growing problem.

A Four Corners investigation has revealed Murdoch, along with other universities across Australia, has been accepting international students with English below the universities' published standards and students who had not taken independent language tests.

Three Murdoch academics said they were worried that speaking publicly would put their jobs at risk but they felt they had no choice after making a number of complaints about academic misconduct through university processes.

Now, internal emails show other senior Murdoch academics have been raising the alarm since early last year when they noticed an influx of Indian students who were struggling to cope with university requirements.

'The issues are serious'

Dr Yvonne Haigh from the School of Public Policy at Murdoch wrote to colleagues in November saying she had raised concerns in two emails which were forwarded to Murdoch senior management:

High levels of international students using phone apps to translate the lecture content and in-class activities; students commented this was very disruptive.
Inappropriate teaching space to cater for the number of students.
In-class exams and quizzes were not effective as an assessment due to a range of disruptive behaviour from international students."

Dr Haigh told the ABC she stood by the comments made in her 2018 email and added she believed "the issues are serious" and required external investigation.

"I have serious concerns for the many international postgraduate students who are studying at Murdoch … these students will require extra support," she said.

Domestic students leaving, says academic

The former head of the Sir Walter Murdoch School of Public Policy and International Affairs, Professor Benjamin Reilly, also wrote to colleagues in November saying concerns "are widely shared amongst faculty" and they have been brought to the attention of members of the senior executive numerous times.

He wrote that he understood that the university had lowered its English testing score for entry into some of its courses:

"In semester one 2018 we experienced a surge in new international students into some postgraduate courses. This surge increased sharply in semester two 2018, with several hundred new students, mostly from the Punjab region of India, enrolling in a small number of postgraduate courses.

"While some were OK, many do not have the language skills to study at a postgraduate level and have thus been unable to participate in class or complete assessments for the units legitimately.

"Hence we now have a much larger number of academic misconduct issues, supplementary assessments and outright failures than we have previously experienced in the units in which this cohort has enrolled."

Professor Reilly also expressed in the email chain that he was worried about the impact on domestic students, who encountered a "much diminished in-class education experience" due to the language barriers.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-07/emails-show-academics-concerns-over-students/11073166

[Mitsuma]

What did they expect waiving their English entry standards?
But of course, its the money again and those students make them a lot of money, even if they cause issues for professors and other students.

[Stev]

Yeah this is a symptom of universities/colleges/etc as a buisness opening up the flood gates to move as many bodies through as possible, consequences be damned.