Philip Bateman talks to Phil Honeywood, IEAA about the Government's role in international education, the benefits of studying in Australia, and keeping abreast with technology. This interview included a message to Australian education providers.
A Member of Parliament for Warrandyte for 18 years, Mr Honeywood was appointed Minister for Tertiary Education, Training and Multicultural Affairs (and Deputy Leader of the State Liberal Party Opposition). In 2006 he moved into the dynamic international education industry, working as the Marketing Director and CEO at Stotts Business College and Cambridge International College, then commencing his current Peak Industry Body role in Nov, 2011.
You can find out more by visiting https://www.ieaa.org.au/ or find Mr Honeywood on Linkedin via https://au.linkedin.com/in/phil-honey...
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- Here with Phil Honeywood, convener of the National Council for International Education, and we're at the conference of the ACETIE exhibition. Mr Honeywood, can you tell me how important is international education to Australia?
- International education, Philip, is Australia's fourth largest industry, after coal, iron ore, and now LNG. So we like to think that our industry actually provides the real value add, compared to just taking stuff out of the ground, and putting it on boats and sending it overseas. Crucially, it's also an amazing soft power industry, so it's not just about making money out of international students, and their parents, investing heavily in their children's future by coming to Australia. It's also very much about ensuring that Australia is better understood by young people from many different countries coming here. If they like Australia, they go back, and they're ambassadors for our country for the rest of their lives. And I think that's a really important attribute, quite apart from being a money making industry.
- Could you take me through some of your previous work when you were in Government, in relation to education?
- Sure, the state of Victoria has got the most wonderful ability to absorb and to look after international young people. That's because we're the most culturally diverse state in the country. We've had, obviously post World War II, incredible numbers of Italian, Greek, many other European nationalities came escaping war-torn Europe to Melbourne, where we had the factories and the jobs available to them. But also we've got a very strong Asian diaspora now as well. So, when international students come to Australia, they feel much more welcome because it's a culturally diverse community. And my job as multicultural-affairs minister, in the previous Jeff Kennett government, was really to try and ensure that those migrant communities felt that they were welcome, felt that politicians would listen to their particular community issues, and felt that they could be part of the wider community, in this new country that adopted them. So, that portfolio was really important for me understanding better the needs and aspirations of new migrants when they come to Australia, and particularly in Melbourne and Victoria. And then, happily, I also had higher education training, so I was responsible for our eight universities in Victoria, in terms of regulations and legislation, and for apprenticeships in the TAFE system. So yeah, it was wonderful when I decided to retire from politics in 2006, you put multicultural-affairs and education together, and you've got international education.
- Oh wonderful, yeah. I mean, I'm a graduate of Swinburne University, did my masters in entrepreneurship and innovation there, and I've been seeing, that was about five years ago I finished that now, and I've been seeing the rationalisation of offerings in universities and basically their core contracts basically has been moved to MOOCS, massively online courses and things like that. As the education offerings of universities sort of condense to be more efficient, from a business perspective, how does that contrast against the international students coming through? Like where do you see as the future challenges?
- The overwhelming majority of international students who come from China in particular are doing business and commerce related courses. What we shouldn't overlook though, Philip, is that in their own country they are being taught primarily in a rote learning pedagogy, and in Australia for many years, our teaching and learning has focused on creative thinking, critical thinking, team based learning, project based learning. And so what they get when they come to Australia, hopefully, is a different way of being taught, which is also in accord with what employers are saying they want out of young graduates. Increasing numbers of employers right around the world, not just in Australia, are saying they actually want young employees, graduates who can think for themselves, can work in teams, can go from one project to another, seamlessly. And that's what a good Australian education offers, compared to some countries in Asia.
- Yeah, and I've been noticing that certain universities have been saying that a graduate degree is not actually required anymore to join large tech companies and, university aside just as education as a whole, I think that speaks to exactly what you're talking about there, about capacity to deal with things.
- Sure, look, international students come to Australia for many motivations. It might be to live in a clean, green environment compared to their home country. It might be to explore what young people want to explore. So, we're going to really... put it in a bottle and try and promote it or sell it. It's really about giving them a global citizenship experience. And it doesn't matter whether that's done in a face-to-face context, whether it's done through getting to know other young Australians, and working for an IT startup, there's many different ways in which they can maximise the benefits of studying in a country like Australia.
- How are you seeing technology be a benefit to the transformation of education?
- Absolutely I think, whilst there's still very much a role for face-to-face, because we often forget that by bringing students together onto a campus, it's often not what they learn in the lecture theatre, or the classroom, it's what they learn over a drink in the student union, particularly in my day, that helps the creative juices flow. But in terms of technology, yes. We've heard today from Monash University, from Sunny Yang, who's the vice-president international at Monash, how some of our top universities are really using interactive technology, and that's what young students are demanding. To see that the investment their parents are making, in Australia's top universities, is being reflected in the latest teaching-aid technology and interactive IT platforms that they can maximise their learning from, so yeah. We have a duty of care at the end of the day, because their parents are investing so heavily in their future with us, to provide the latest, up-to-date technology that will support the teaching pedagogical outcome.
- Are you aware of a lot Australian universities that are regularly going over to China, to look at the latest technology? Because I know, for instance, we have Alibaba here, talking about the massive AI automation systems that are coming, EyeFly tech, things like that. When I visit China I find it, fundamentally, a generational leap ahead of Australia, from a technology integration perspective so, how does that flow back into how we're educating students about the world, for want of a better term?
- Well because we now have 700,000 full fee-paying international students in Australia, most of our fairly agile, nimble universities are well aware of the need to try and keep abreast of global trends so be it. Monash uni, Melbourne uni, Sydney uni, UNSW, not just the group of eight, but also many others like Macquarie university, and Deakin university I know are examples where they're really, as you say, going to countries like China to see how they can adapt the latest technologies onto their curriculum design back here. Or they're partnering with offshore universities, so they're doing 2+2 programs, where the student might study two years in their home country, at a partner university with an Australian university, then doing the other two years of the degree program here in Australia. But you can have virtual programs as well. So Monash university have teamed up with you know, obviously, Warwick in the UK, and they have virtual classrooms between UK based students and Australian based Monash students, so there's many innovative models that're happening.
- And what are you most excited about for the future of education in Australia?
- What I'm most excited about is that Australia has moved, in my lifetime, from being an Anglo-Saxon outpost in the Asian corner of the world, to being seen by our own region, you know, the Pacific region, as being very much a culturally diverse study destination, a culturally diverse holiday destination, and a destination in which they can really learn a lot about global citizenship attributes.
- As a young person, relatively at 36, growing up here, I'm so proud to be able to call this as a base because I'm seeing all these international companies go "well we're not just a testing ground anymore, let's make our first international office outside of China, in Melbourne". And it's just a really exciting time.
- Good!
- What would be your message to Australian education providers out there, if there's one thing you could tell them, what would you say?
- Given that it's only a minority of Australian education providers who have programs involving international students, don't just look at international students as a way to add value financially. Look at them as a way to provide inter-cultural competencies to your own domestic students. So it might be a government primary school, and if they could just get three or four international students from different countries to have a study experience in their school community, it's not just going to be beneficial to those foreign kids coming over for half a year, a year, whatever, it's going to be incredibly beneficial to the Australian kiddies in the playground, in the classroom, to learn from other cultures, and we really have to promote that.
- Okay, and final question, as we've been on this boom of international student education and people are, for want of a better term, cashing in on it, are we getting to a saturation point where we're going to hit a plateau and then the growth won't be there anymore? Are people considering that in their business cases?
- There's no doubt that certain politicians would like to put a cap on international students, Pauline Hanson, One Nation party. Jacqui Lambie, they've all pointed to that. However, we're still a very vibrant community, we still have many courses that have very few international students, outside of business and commerce, we need to get more international students into health sciences, into architecture, creative industries. So, no, we're not at saturation point, maybe we are nudging there with certain courses such as business and commerce, but when you look at the whole gamut of curriculum across all of our educational institutions, there's plenty of capacity left in some of those growing industries that will really be important in the future such as aged care, and health management and those areas.
- Wonderful, thank you so much for your time.
- Thank you Philip, great, good!