Preparing Australian Universities for the Coming Wave of Indian Students

Sharma and Abdo (2018) warn of Australian university's over reliance on students from China, and suggest looking to India as a secondary market. They note that international Indian students tend to be postgraduate and less "premium" than Chinese students, attending Australian regional and non-Go8 institutions.

The authors suggest Indian students are looking for more accessible programs (not requiring a high GPA),  pre-masters programs, lower cost programs, and shorter programs. To facilitate this Sharma and Abdo suggest Australian visas be changed to accommodate students studying for a one-year master’s degree.

The authors end by suggesting three invitations for program delivery: Offshore, Combined and Online/blended. The last of these I suggest has considerable potential. The authors envisage digital delivery of Australia-branded certifications, with use of optional offshore study centers and/or short periods in Australia. The key point here I suggest is the Australian-branding, to overcome the poor reputation which online qualifications have in India (and China). Also I suggest there is considerable scope for sub-degree qualifications and industry certifications. This would fit well with online study, which suits shorter and more vocationally orientated subjects.

A few weeks ago I outlined a proposal for a Colombo Plan 2.0 delivering micro-credentials via mobile devices, to students of Indo-Pacific.  A short paper on this "Blended Learning for the Indo-Pacific" (Worthington 2018), has been accepted for the IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment and Learning for Engineering (TALE), to be presented 6 December, in Wollongong. This proposes to bootstrapping mobile education by using mobile courses to teach computer professionals how to design and deliver such courses.

References

The Elephant at the Door: Preparing Australian Universities for the Coming Wave of Indian Students, by Anip Sharma and Mary Abdo,  L.E.K. Consulting, 31 October 2018

Blended Learning for the Indo-Pacific, Tom Worthington, accepted for the IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment and Learning for Engineering (TALE), 4-7 December 2018, Wollongong, Australia.