This is an extremely shortened version of the thesis proposal that was accepted. It is meant only as a basic summary.
Introduction
This thesis will analyse the growth and decline of that part of the international education industry aligned to the migration desires of its students to investigate ways in which governments go about creating regulatory and legislative frameworks to encourage and guide commercial activity in the furtherance of social aims while operating in a global economy.
Governance, Globalisation and Education:
Since the late 20th Century the process of framing legislative and regulatory conditions to foster commercial activity in the furtherance of the social aims of a singular polity has become more difficult for a number of reasons, and particularly in the new service sectors. The rapid development of technology as driver and result of globalisation has meant that commercial entities in the services sectors are particularly nimble in creating systems to capture opportunities across individual polities as opportunities arise. In education, this has lead to conflict between the inherently national interests of single states and the international interests and capabilities of commercial entities and markets.
Farrell (2003) notes the anxiety about international trade in education services that arises in the national perspective held by singular polities:
There is concern among national education authorities over whether greater openness to trade in international education services through the GATS mechanism of the WTO represents a threat to the nature of education as a public good. (Farell 2003, p. 244)
While he notes that:
International education has grown rapidly over the last decade, driven by technological change and a growing demand for increasingly specialised education and training in developed countries. (Farell 2003, p. 247)
He also notes that individual polities generally sense that internationalisation can potentially present a threat to their own interests:
Most barriers to trade in services take the form of domestic regulations. In the area of education services, typical stated objectives of the regulations in place are to promote or protect culture and national traditions, as well as to provide training and education for consumers. (Farell 2003, p.247)
The enduring sovereignty of governments over different specific regional areas means regulatory changes in one polity, and in the interests of one polity, will impact upon the nature and scope of the commercial activity within that polity. But because of the international nature of commercial activities, government regulation in one polity can also change commercial activity in other polities, which can in turn have varying effects on the people of that other polity. The gap then between the capabilities of commercial entities to capture opportunities and government capabilities to create regulatory frameworks designed to foster or guide commercial activities has both national and international ramifications, while the polities themselves generally only feel accountable to the people who make up the individual polity. At the same time, the commercial entities themselves are becoming faster, more effective, and more integral to the provision of services nationally and internationally.
Along with the considerable level of unease about the effects of globalisation, particularly on higher education (Yang 2003), there has grown an understanding that globalisation may require a new way of thinking about the role of the state, or the way the state goes about playing its role:
While the problems of orthodox economic liberalism have become increasingly apparent, it is also evident that older orthodoxies that placed the state in a dominating economic role are not viable. (MacEwan 1999, p. 3)
This disconnect between the international capabilities of commercial entities and the national interests of singular polities creates great complexity around regulation when individual governments seek to design regulatory systems aimed at utilising commercial activity to further social aims:
Over-regulation can be as damaging, and even more damaging, as under regulation, especially in the new services sectors, where the dynamics of technological change and convergence between sectors make it particularly hard to regulate in a timely manner. Regulation has to be flexible enough not to stifle development . . . Regulators need to understand the consequences of the regimes and regulatory structures that they have erected. The political economy approach to regulation needs to define major interest groups engaged in regulatory rent-seeking, while the public interest approach is aimed at correcting various market failure situations. (Findlay & Sidorenko 2003, p. 3)
Concern about this is not necessarily new. Grant (1997), says:
The development of economic globalisation has not been counter-balanced by the development of appropriate mechanisms of governance. The 1980s [!!] have seen an accelerating process of economic globalisation, but a relatively limited development of political structures that can regulate this process . . . International firms create the need for improved international governance, but they do not and cannot provide it. (Grant 1997, p. 319)
Rogers Hollingsworth and Boyer (1997) have noted:
The old but pervasive dichotomy between states and markets has to be discarded, to be replaced by a broader array of institutional arrangements, which mix in varying degree the pursuit of individual self interest and social obligations, relations among equals, and power symmetries. . . Because each type of institutional arrangement simultaneously exhibits strengths and weaknesses, its performance and viability depends on the precise context and configurations of interests within which it is embedded. No single institution can pretend to have universal or eternal superiority – even such a celebrated institution as the invisible hand of the market. . . In the real world, any economy consists of a combination of institutional arrangements, all of which complement each other and thus acquire some efficiency. No institutional configuration can simply be borrowed and implemented in any given social setting. Institutional arrangements evolve according to a distinct logic within each society . . . Institutions are not static entities defined once and for all, but they continuously respond to changing contexts and emerging structural crises. This is of special importance, given the present transformation occurring in social systems of production and the changing status of sub-national regions, nation-states, and the world economy. (Rogers Hollingsworth & Boyer 1997, p. 53)
Governments are thus faced with the task of creating regulatory regimes that attempt to control or guide commercial activity but can generally only do so for spaces within their borders, while at the same time entities involved in commercial activity are becoming increasingly transnational either in themselves or through networks of entities.
Commercial and governmental organisations in the end fundamentally rely on each other, the one in order to pursue its commercial interests and the other to build the very polity it seeks to govern. The continuing acceptance of the sovereignty of governments means their ability to have populations and commercial entities generally obey their legislative and regulatory regimes will continue, but the increasing internationalisation of commercial activity means these regulations will need to be designed and implemented in ways that understand their effects and can in practice optimise social advantages through guiding and leveraging the increasing technological and international abilities of commercial entities. As this process of internationalisation and technological change continues, the way government goes about regulating may also need to change, and this thesis explores this issue.
The creation of the Education-Migration pathway as a case study in Government intervention in markets in a globalised economy:
The history of the creation and closure of the education-migration pathway provides a very useful and vivid example of governments designing legislative frameworks that foster commercial growth in order to achieve social aims. In addition, it is an example of governments doing so in an area of activity known to be highly globalised. Indeed one might even say that because it is to do with migration it is definitively globalised.
Governments in Australia have a long history of facilitating opportunities for commercial growth as a means of furthering social aims (Wells, 1989). The forms of these opportunities have varied from directly funded incentives such as the old assisted passage or the modern funded traineeships, to the deliberate construction of legislative and regulatory frameworks designed to advantage (or disadvantage) various modes of commercial activity.
In the late 1990's there was a widely held view that Australia was suffering from a skills shortage (DEST, 2002). Though there is some debate about the veracity of claims regarding the extent of the shortage (Mitchell & Quirk 2005), the perception in government that the skills shortage did exist was strong (Birrell, Hawthorne & Richardson, 2006, p.10).
One of the strategies adopted by the Commonwealth to ameliorate the effects of the skills shortage was to create a new skilled migration pathway for international students studying in Australia. This pathway required prospective migrants to become qualified, in Australia, in any of a number of specific trades.
Australia obviously has a long history of immigration, and so a long history of governmental regulation of immigration. The idea of international students happening to subsequently become skilled migrants is not in itself a new idea, but the creation of a specific pathway for this stream of skilled migrants, for the fulfilment of specific skill needs and thus social aims, was new, and held several key advantages. Ziguras and Siew-Fang Law (2006) nominated four:
First, they [international students who subsequently become skilled migrants] increase the recruiting country's pool of highly trained workers, who are increasingly important for economic development. Second, most economically developed societies have low birth rates and ageing populations, and recruiting young people who are at the beginning of their working lives helps to sustain the number of working-age adults needed to support the growing pool of retired elderly. Third, graduates of the recruiting country's own tertiary institutions are more readily employed than foreign graduates. Fourth, the prospect of migration gives some countries a marketing advantage in recruiting fee-paying international students, which is particularly significant in countries in which education is a major export industry. (Ziguras & Siew-Fang Law, 2006, pp59-76)
For parts of the private sector of international education in Australia a number of factors were aligning. Providers who were able to effectively bring together the large demand for the ability to migrate to Australia with the new pathways enabling people to do so, would benefit.
At the same time, advances in technology made possible the creation of new processing systems, both commercial and governmental, that meant the procedure for prospective migrants applying for student visas and enrolling in registered courses became significantly less burdensome in terms of time and money. Also, the rapid rise of the middle classes in India and China, along with the spread of better ICT and financial instruments in those countries, meant the number of people with both a desire to come to Australia and the means to do so was increasing (Das, G 2002).
In terms of achieving the social aim of increasing the number of prospective migrants using this new pathway, the scheme worked. In 2001-02 the number of onshore applicants who nominated their occupation as Cook or Hairdresser was 70. In 2004-2005 it was 470 (Birrell, Hawthorne & Richardson, 2006, p.15). In 2007 - 2008 more than 5,000 skilled migration visas for Cooks and Hairdressers were granted, and in 2010 there are currently 17,594 valid applications made by people nominating their occupation as Cook or Hairdresser (House of Representatives, 2010).
However, this astonishing success in terms of numbers of people attempting to access this migration pathway brought with it a number of problems. Not the least is the plain number problem that while the Commonwealth is issuing 61,500 skilled visas in the 2010 budget year, there are already over 147,000 applicants for skilled migration awaiting a decision on their application, the vast majority of whom are graduated international students (House of Representatives, 2010).
The Commonwealth government has been acutely aware of this problem for some time, and has progressively changed the requirements for onshore skilled migration applicants since 2008. The cumulative effect of these changes is to close the pathway previously created. This has resulted in a number of social ramifications that were perhaps unseen and even unseeable at the time the legislative framework was implemented (Maley, 2010), (Bachelard, 2010).
While the program itself may be regarded positively or negatively depending on the varying ethical schemas one might apply, this thesis seeks to explore the ways in which the creation and closing of the program illuminates issues around how governments might go about regulating commercial activity in the new globalised world across the broad spectrum of attempts to achieve social aims by fostering commercial activity.
Australia, House of Representatives, 26th May 2010, Hansard (Laurie Ferguson, MP Reid)
Bachelard, M (2010, 6th June) 'Student Drop Hits Economy', The Age
Birrell, B, Hawthorne, L and Richardson, S. 2006, Evaluation of the General Skilled Migration Categories, Dept of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Canberra
Das, G, 2004 India Unbound: the social and economic revolution from independence to the global information age, Anchor Books, New York
DEST, 2002 ' Nature and Causes of Skills Shortages', Reflections from the Commonwealth National Industry Skills Initiative Working Groups, DEST, Canberra
Farrell, R 2003, 'Barriers to trade in education services', in A Siderenko and C Findlay (eds.), Regulation and Market Access, Asia Pacific Press, Australia, pp. 244 - 277.
Findlay & Sidorenko 2003 (eds.) Regulation and Market Access, Asia Pacific Press, Australia, p3.
Grant, W 1997 ' Perspectives on Globalization and Economic Coordination' in J Rogers Hollingsworth and R Boyer (eds.), Contemporary Capitalism: The Embeddedness of Institutions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 319 - 336
MacEwan, A 1999 Neo-Liberalism or Democracy? Economic Strategy, Markets and Alternatives for the 21st Century, Zed Book, London
Maley, P (2010, 17th of May) 'Hairdressers out as migrant skills list gets a trim' The Australian
Mitchell, W & Quirk, V 2005, Skills shortages in Australia: concepts and reality, Centre of Full Employment and Equity, University of Newcastle, Australia
Rogers Hollingsworth, J & Boyer R 1997 'The variety of institutional arrangements and their complementarity in modern economies', in J Rogers Hollingsworth and R Boyer (eds.), Contemporary Capitalism: The Embeddedness of Institutions, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 49 - 54
Yang, R 'Globalisation and Higher Education Development: A Critical Analysis', International Review of Education, 2003 pp. 269 - 291.
Wells, A 1989, Constructing Capitalism. An economic history of eastern Australia, 1788-1901, Allen and Unwin, Sydney
Ziguras, C and Siew-Fang Law 2006, Recruiting international students as skilled migrants: the global 'skills race' as viewed from Australia and Malaysia in Globalisation, Societies and Education Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 59–76
