Why Australia can’t afford to neglect international students
“We must continue viewing students as an asset, not just to our economy, but to the prosperity of our nation”
Have you ever stopped to think about what Australia would be like without international education? Australia’s education industry supports 240,000 jobs. If all those people suddenly became unemployed, our unemployment rate would jump from 5.2% to 7.1%. With a $37.7 billion hole in Australia’s economy, either taxes would go up, or spending on services would go down.
In the past, Australia’s prosperity was driven via wool, wheat and energy exports. Today, international education is one of the country’s strongest revenue generators, with recent federal department of education statistics revealing that over 700,000 international students have lived, worked and studied in Australia this year to date.