Transformed Australian Eduscape: The Mobility of Asian International Students and Academics

Abstract

International students’ mobility has transformed the Australian higher education landscape over the past three decades, effecting two significant changes: reconfiguration of the funding structure and the diversification of campus population. Though the Australian university system is open to the inflow of students and academics from the Global South, its governing policies remain shaped by the hegemonic ideology of the Global North. Asian international students are attracted into the system as “cash cows”, but at the same time they continue to be regarded as the “inadequate” Other under the neoliberal management in terms of curriculum design; some, as is the case with Chinese international students, are deemed a “security threat” by the state. This chapter confronts the conceptual challenges of Asian mobility in Australia; it argues for a new ontology as well as a new epistemology that recognises the “internationalising” effect of international students, which in turn obliges a global cognitive justice ethos and asserts the need to build an international constituency for the public good of international student mobility.