International student policy in the host community: the case of Australia

Studying the problems associate with international students in host communities seems to be an extremely urgent scientific task of our time, attention to which is paid from the standpoint of economics, sociology, psychology, pedagogy and a number of other sciences; not the last place in this order is occupied by political science. Russian Federation, along with long-term leaders represented by the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Germany and France, was actively involved in the struggle to attract foreign students, which became possible, not least due to the inclusion of domestic universities in the struggle for advancement in international academic rankings, as well as staging within the framework of the National Project, tasks to increase the export of education. Despite the obvious advantages of such a solution, expressed in the form of an increase in the international status of Russia as a center of science and education, economic benefits, there are also significant risks both for students (international and Russian) and for the host community. In this regard, the main aim of the work is to identity the main problems faced by international students in Australia, a state that is one of the generally recognized leaders in the export of education, which has experienced a significant quantitative increase in recent years. The choice of Australia as a research object is associated with a number of factors: a jump-like growth of foreign students similar to Russia in a short time; the sustainability of the higher education system has become dependent on one importer (China); emerging problems, specific cases, are raised for discussion both by the state (for example, in the form of open government reports) and by the media, which does not happen in other leading countries. As a result of the study, the following conclusions were obtained Australia has experienced an exponential and very ill-considered increase in the number of international students in recent years. The reliance on attracting students from China, thanks to which the main growth was ensured, and the change in the order of public funding, put universities in serious dependence on Beijing, with which political tensions continue to grow. Reorientation to other markets (for example, India and Nepal) leads to a decrease in the level of students’ training, including language, which, as a result, has a devastating effect on the level of Australian education in general. In the current crisis situation associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian government made international students «unwelcome guests» which also has significant image losses.

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