Lemmens The Virtual Challenge to International Cooperation in Higher Education Bernd Wächter (ed.) Aca papers on International Cooperation in Education The V irtual Challenge to International Cooperation in Higher Education

Virtual mobility and Australia’s market-driven approach
In this presentation, I want to look at where virtual mobility sits in the Australi-
an context of international education, which has been described on the pro-
gramme of this conference as the “market-driven approach”. I think Australia’s
take-up of offshore or transnational education and online delivery is to a large
extent a response to the market – but I do not agree that the total approach of
Australia to international education has been, or is, market-driven.
Let me set the Australian context for international student mobility – then
focus on the “offshore delivery” phenomenon before outlining some of the
activities and research initiatives on online delivery – and pose the question
as to the benefits of online or virtual delivery?
The Australian context for international mobility
Australia has always needed to use different modes of delivery of education.
It is a vast country, just about the same size geographically as the US, but
with a small population of fewer than 20 million people. Australian educators
at all levels have a history and culture of using the “school of the air” (using
broadcasts) and correspondence courses (sent by mail) for delivery. Some
universities have been established in Australia with specific missions involv-
ing distance education. Issues of access and equity, rather than the market,
have tended to drive these different delivery modes.
Australia is a country which has always been open to international in-
fluences. The openness is wide-ranging and philosophical, manifesting itself
in areas as diverse as Australia’s development assistance to its region, its
push for free trade and its immigration programme – and multicultural
society. Humanitarian issues, rather than the market, have driven Australia to
take in proportionally very high numbers of the world’s refugees.
Education makes up a substantial component of Australia’s development
assistance to its region. For the last 50 years, Australia has sponsored over-
seas students for study in Australia and for the last 30 years, it has provided
technical assistance through cooperative programmes of institutional de-
velopment to universities in Asia and the Pacific. Development assistance
issues, rather than the market, have driven Australia to educate at its cost
something in excess of 50,000 students from Asia and the Pacific under
what we used to call the Colombo Plan.
In 1985, however, the Australian government did recognise that education
had the potential to be a significant export industry, and Australia moved
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from aid in education to trade in education; and to a new policy of internatio-
nalisation from 1992 on, away from concentration on exporting student
places to a recognition of the wider activities involved in international educa-
tion and the wider benefits which flow from seeking to internationalise our
education systems.
Nevertheless, Australia has made a commercial success of exporting educa-
tion. We claim with some pride that education is now Australia’s eighth
largest export, bigger than wool. It is this commercial success that gives us
our reputation as being market-driven. In 2001, there are over 126,000 inter-
national students studying at Australian higher education institutions in Aus-
tralia, 16% of our total higher education population.
International students have been the “driver” of Australian internationalisation
of higher education – and have contributed significantly to the changes in our
curriculum.