AFRICAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALASIA AND THE PACIFIC CONFERENCE

Here are My ‘Opening remarks’ to the AFSAAP held  at Flinders University Victoria Square on the 1st of December’. (10/12/11)

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

Making a Difference: Australian International Education was launched by Chris Evans in Canberra yesterday. The book looks at 25 years of international education in Australia.  It was edited by Dorothy Davis and Bruce Mackintosh, and published by UNSW Press. The editors have a short piece on the book in The Australian.

I wrote an Overview to Chapter 7, the full title of which is ‘Responses of Educational Institutions : Handling Student Growth and Identity’. The chapter is composed of short pieces by Karel Reus (on Monash University), Betty Leask (internationalising teaching and learning), David Burns (pathway programs), Rebecca Hall (the VET sector), and Mariana Lane and Elizabeth Webber (schools).

Click here to see the book details on the IEAA website. (23/11/11)

THREE CITIES: BEIJING

Beijing was a dull grey.  Some believe it was predominantly fog, others, myself included, that it was smog. The environmental agencies have a high threshold for describing air quality as polluted, too high in the view of many in Beijing.

The traffic congestion in Beijing gets worse every time I visit. The Beijing government introduced a restriction that forced vehicles off the road on alternate weekdays during the Olympics. It was sufficiently successful that the restrictions were kept in place after the Olympics. A local told me many families responded by buying an extra vehicle so they always had one available for use.

My visit included meetings with the Ministry of Education, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Capital Normal University, and the Australian Ambassador, along with an alumni dinner.  It took a significant amount of time to transfer from venue-to-venue, limiting the number of meetings possible in a couple of days.

I arrived from Hong Kong through Beijing Capital International Airport.  I was struck, not for the first time by the massive size of the Airport. But for all its size it seems to be remarkably efficient. (4/11/11)

THREE CITIES: TIANJIN

The sky in Tianjin was a dull grey, as it often is during my October visit, but the gloom was offset by mild temperatures in an area that sometimes experiences brutal weather. I had planned a trip to the Binhai New Area, and particularly the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-city northeast of the centre of Binhai and halfway between it and Hangu. We flew along the elevated roadways that connect Tianjin and the Eco-city at speeds up to 180 kmh; the speed limit is 120kmh. Much of the area we passed through has been partly rehabilitated, and is waiting future development. In the distance were several high-rise satellite towns, which may or may not have been inhabited. I could not tell.

The 30 km2 Eco-city is well under way, though with much to do before it reaches its full planned capacity of 350,000 residents (about the size of Canberra). The plan is ambitious.

Despite having the backing of both the Singapore and Chinese governments - the framework agreement was signed in November 2007 - it remains heavily dependent on attracting private investment. From the Singapore perspective, this is the second big initiative, following on from the Suzhou Industrial Park. For the Chinese it is a major development that exceeds in size both the project that created Shenzhen and the Pudong area of Shanghai.

The Bin Hai New Area has attracted a lot of industry. The Eco-city is planned as a hub for environmental technologies and good environmental practice. There are windmills visible around the entrance, and much planting of trees and bushes.  Housing estates built on green principles are sprouting up, along with areas for digital and other industries. A set of KPI’s centred on carbon emissions (less than 150 tonnes per $US1 million of GDP), recycling (over 60%), renewable energy (over 20%), and non-traditional sources of water, are designed to keep track of progress.

There are numerous eco-cities being built around the world.  Given the fast pace of development of the Sino-Singapore Eco-city, we should have a reasonable indication of its success within another two to three years.  (3/11/11)

THREE CITIES: HONG KONG

My first stop is Hong Kong. The scale of development of the city continues to amaze me.  In-fill is a growth industry. It is not just that Hong Kong International Airport is on a purpose-built island, impressive as that is. From my hotel window I looked over the Convention and Exhibition Centre and the adjacent development, all of which is pushing Hong Kong Island further into the channel that separates it from Kowloon. And Kowloon side is pushing back, with infill extending further towards Wanchai. Will the two meet up through a land bridge? It is not the intention, but who could rule it out? 

In contrast, progress in the adjacent West Kowloon Cultural District has been painfully slow. However, when public consultations are completed and the Development Plan finalized the tempo will, you would expect, pickup. 

Flinders programs in China have changed quite significantly over the last few years. There is now more concentration around specific partnerships with good universities, and combining both student-centred activities and emerging research partnerships.

The University has undergraduate programs in accountancy and creative arts (digital media) through a partnership with the Chinese University of Hong Kong and its School of Continuing and Professional Studies. While business programs have dominated the offerings of foreign universities, developments such as the West Kowloon Cultural District highlight the growing interest in the creative arts, not just as a tourist attraction, as originally intended for West Kowloon, but for locals as well. To be globally competitive, cities need to have a vibrant culture and an expanding creative class. The Flinders program will tap into the escalating need for more sophisticated digital media.  (25/10/11)

SOFT POWER

I have posted my presentation to the AIEC on soft power: ‘Enhancing the soft power potential of Australian international education: re-defining the next 25 years’. There were over 100 people in the session, and they seemed to be interested in the topic. Some had passionate views about the importance of the non-commercial side of international education and the need to tell the story better.  (15/10/11)

EAIE 2011

While sitting in the lounge in Copenhagen, waiting for the first of several flights home, I got to thinking about the European Association for International Education’s (EAIE) annual meeting just ended.

It remains an organism of two halves, bound together by an energetic social calendar.  I spent most of my time at the trade fair side of things, meeting colleagues from other universities and talking with company reps about the services they provide.  Most of the latter were connected in one way or another with the internet.

Unlike in other years, I made very few forays into the workshops and paper presentations, although I did go to a session where Daniel Guhr spoke about the issues confronting Australian universities in sustaining and growing international students, based on his extensive analysis of student data.

He reinforced what we knew about the damage to the Australian education brand, and the significant loss of student trust in the Australia experience. He mentioned his concerns about ‘talent dilution’, the process by which universities around the world are enrolling students they would not have admitted in the past. He also drew attention to the increasing living tuition costs, by world standards, and the failures in terms of national policy associated with international education and visa issues.

The presentation sparked very little discussion, either because of the gloomy prognosis, or because these issues have been extensively discussed over the last two and a half years.  More the latter than the former, I surmise.

The sessions on social media in marketing were apparently very well attended. Attendees at the EAIE once looked down on anything commercial, but that is changing quite rapidly. There was a steady stream of tweets at #eaie2011, but not as many as might be expected given the significance of electronic communication in international education. Perhaps the ample social events remain the prime means of communication for participants. (18/9/11)

IMPACT OF FEWER INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

John Ross wrote a piece on the impact of a decline in the number of international students in The Australian today.  It was titled ‘Boom needs student skills: report’. I was among those quoted. (5/7/11)

WOMEN, CITIZENSHIP, MIGRATION

Michiyo Yoshida recently published a book based on her PhD thesis.  It’s title is Women, Citizenship and Migration: The Resettlement of Vietnamese Refugees in Australia and Japan (Nakanishiya Shuppan, Kyoto, 2011).  I was pleased she sent me a copy, as it was a good, painstaking piece of research, with some revealing insights into the challenges Vietnamese women must deal with in the new societies in which they lived, regardless of their citizenship entitlements. (1/7/11)

THE AQF

The revised Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) was launched at a Symposium yesterday in Melbourne. My modest contribution was a presentation titled ‘The AQF: Providing (extra) Certainty for Mobile Students’ that looked at the possible impact on the attraction of Australia for international students, and on the qualification recognition improvements for students seeking work outside Australia. (24/6/11)

UNI FUNDING

In Jill Rowland’s article today on ‘Public concern over uni funding’ I made a few comments on some arguments put forward in the NTEU’s paper. I had a different view to the NTEU. (22/6/11)

A LIVING DON

I bought Mary Beard’s book It’s a Don’s Life (Profile Books, London, 2009) in a secondhand bookshop in Brighton.  She is a Cambridge historian of ancient Greece, and the book is composed of her blogs, which can be found in The Times. Beard blogs about universities, and draws on her extensive knowledge of life in ancient Rome, especially Pompeii, her favourite city.  I particularly enjoyed hearing from the eccentrics who add their esoteric comments. The blog is popular; 80,000 hits for her ’10 things you thought you knew about the Romans...but didn’t’was her best.  (21/6/11)

CLIMATE CHANGE: THE SOCIAL SERVICE ASPECTS

I made some ‘Introductory remarks’ to the Anglicare/Flinders University Research to Practice Seminar today.  (31/5/11)

QUALIFICATIONS FRAMEWORK

I have been invited to present a paper at the launch of the revised Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) in Melbourne next month.  The two themes for me to address are the impact of the AQF on, first, attracting international students to Australia, and second, the international career prospects of Australian and international students.  (29/5/11)

VALE

Jamie Mackie (1924-2011) passed away recently. He was a significant member of the post war generation of scholars of Southeast Asia, Indonesia in particular.  He headed the Centre of Southeast Asian Studies at Monash University in the 1970s, which he helped make one of the two main locations in Australia for the study of Southeast Asia.  He later moved to the Research School of Pacific Studies at the ANU.  Jamie was one of the supervisors of my doctoral dissertation at Monash.  He could be mischievous; he told me he said his occupation was ‘mendicant’ on immigration forms.  However, he was always generous with his support, though I suspect I fell short of his expectations of an Indonesia specialist. 

Tony Adams (1944-2011) was a one of the main figures responsible for the establishment of international education in Australia.  First at RMIT University and later Macquarie University he developed successful strategies to increase international students, laying the foundations for two of Australia’s largest international student programs.  In later years he was a strong advocate of the internationalization of universities.  Tony was generous with his time and advice, sharing insights with me in the late 1990s and in the first few years of the following decade when both our universities were part of a consortium in China. (25/5/11)

NATIONAL URBAN POLICY

Our Cities, Our Future. A National Urban Policy for a Productive Sustainable and Liveable Future has been released. It intersects, even overlaps, with the recently released Sustainable Australia - Sustainable Communities. (19/5/11)

SUSTAINABLE OZ

The Government’s Sustainable Australia - Sustainable Communities. A Sustainable Population Strategy for Australia was released a few weeks back. 

The initial press coverage focused on the absence of a numerical population target in the report.  This sidesteps the divisive debate over whether we have a ‘big’ Australia or something else; a small Australia, perhaps, primarily made up of grumbling citizens mostly over 60.  But lets not go there.

It is an unusual strategy, yet there is a lot to like in the approach taken. Population is contextualized and hence includes all the main elements impacting on people. There is little of substance left out, and not much to get the incisors stuck into, unless, of course, you are Tony Abbott.

Several existing policy initiatives - affordable housing programs, the national broadband network and carbon pricing, for instance – are included as part of the sustainable population strategy.   

Investment in regional Australia gets much attention. It is perhaps wishful thinking that an increase in regional investment will be sufficient to attract people, in numbers, to non-coastal regional Australia.

International students, aka temporary migrants, are included in the measuring of net overseas migration (p 14). It distorts the overall pattern of migration, although it is based on the accepted statistical conventions, over-emphasizing the immigrant contribution to population growth.

Invariably, in the end it is the capacity of the Government (or the Coalition of Australian Governments) to deliver the strategy that is important.  The final section highlights the elements in the 2011-12 Budget to persuade us that there are real resources going into the strategy. (15/5/11; updated 25/5/11)

STUDENT SLUMP

The story titled ‘Slump in Chinese students begins’ by Bernard Lane, in today’s The Australian draws on some of the views in the paper I wrote and referred to in the blog below. (4/5/11)

RESPONDING TO THE DECLINE

The short paper I presented at the Higher Education Summit in Brisbane is now available on-line.  It was titled “Exploring the sector-wide response to a decline in international students”.  It propmpted an interesting set of responses. 

One of my colleagues asked whether the partial deregulation of the domestic student market in 2012 will result in a reduction in political support for international education in universities?  Will politicians expect the increased numbers of domestic university students to push out international students? An interesting question.  I don’t have an informed answer, but it is a possibility that political support from politicians in some electorates will be eroded even further. (30/4/11)

INDONESIA

It was a short two day visit to Jakarta, but a lot was packed in to it.  The main event was the opening of the Flinders office in Wisma GKBI in Jalan Sudirman.  It’s on the 39th floor; an earth tremor in Jakarta during the week had us wondering how earthquake-proof new office buildings are in Jakarta.  The event was well attended, with the Australian Ambassador to Indonesia, Greg Moriarty, giving a speech and cutting the ribbon with Michael Barber.

We also visited three significant institutions, all of which employ clusters of Flinders alumni, especially from our population, public policy and other social sciences programs.  We met with the CEO’s of BKKBN, the government agency responsible for family planning and population policies, LIPI, the equivalent of CSIRO, and the University of Indonesia. 

Flinders has had a wide range of links with Indonesia since the late 1960s.  Gour Dasvarma, a senior demographer with the School of the Environment, keeps in touch with many of the Indonesian graduates, and they appreciate it.   It is very moving to walk into an office in Jakarta, meet the boss and see the graduates, and hear that in places like BKKBN three quarters of them have been promoted since returning from Australia. 

I was a regular visitor to Indonesia from the mid 1970s until the mid 1990s, including a stint living in Makassar.  I was shocked to realise my last  time in Jakarta was in 1997.  It was a struggle to get my bearings, due to the changes brought about by growth and new investment.  The Indonesians I met, in contrast, were just as friendly and charming as they used to be.  (8/4/11)

HIGHER ED SUMMIT

I have been writing a presentation titled ‘Exploring the sector-wide response to a decline in international students’ for the Higher Education Summit in Brisbane in April. 

The particular issue I am currently worrying over is how to articulate my thoughts about the reasons why the government should have more confidence in the institutions (by which I specifically mean the universities).  I don’t think the problem resides with the public sector bureaucrats, it is mainly at the political level. 

This is connected to another issue I have been thinking about.  From the university perspective, dramatic shifts in policy positions represent a risk to our international education programs (eg changes in visa and immigration policy).  We too need to build greater resilience into our programs, and that means, in part, reducing exposure to government policy.  The problem is, however, as public institutions we almost invariably petition government to address major problems, instead of thinking laterally about solutions. (3/4/11)

CHINA’S CITIES

Update: A draft of ‘China’s Cities: The Last 25 Years’ is available on-line (27/3/11)

I have been drafting a paper on ‘China’s Cities: The Last 25 Years’ for a two-day conference being organised by the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences at Flinders University and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.  It will be on the 22nd and 23rd of March, at Flinders University’s Victoria Square campus, for anyone interested (it’s free, but delegates must register).

I have drawn on some of the material prepared for the book on Planning Asian Cities: Risks and Resilience, the manuscript of which is now with the publishers. I have also added in some additional material on Tianjin.  I will post a draft of the paper after I have presented it.  (26/2/11)

MORE READING 2

Tim Winton’s Land’s Edge: A Coastal Memoir (Hamish Hamilton, Melbourne, 1993) is a slim volume.  Despite a mutual love of the Australian coast and beaches, I avoided Winton’s books in the past.  He struck me as genuine and very earnest, but just not someone I wanted to read.  Land’s Edge changed my mind.  I got a sense of how he and his family connect with the Western Australian coast.  His prose is creamy smooth; perhaps a little too smooth.  (13/2/11) 

STUDENT VISA STATISTICS

The government (the two Ministers Chris Bowen and Chris Evans) has announced a new report on the student visa program. The data is for the last seven years, up to the end of 2010.  (11/2/11)

EXHIBITION LAUNCH

Attended the launch of the new exhibition at the Flinders City Gallery.  It’s called Intangibles in Terra Australis.  Over 400 people turned up, spilling out into the foyer.  There were so many people we ran out of wine glasses.  A lot of local artists represented.  It is on until the 20th of March.  (4/2/11)

25 YEARS

In mid 1985 the government published guidelines for universities intending offering full-fee courses to international students.  It opened a new chapter in the history of Australian universities.  

A book is being written by a group of authors from universities, TAFE institutes and private colleges to mark 25 years of international education.  At a meeting in Melbourne yesterday they came together to discuss key themes and contribute ideas to the final chapter on ‘the future’.

I’m working with a group writing short pieces on the impact on the institutions.  The drafts are almost in their final form.  I have more to do on the overview in which I want to connect together the themes in the other pieces in this part of the book.  Based on a few drafts I have seen, the book is shaping up well.  It has been an extraordinary story, with profound consequences not just for the education institutions, but also for the large numbers with jobs in international education, and the vibrancy of most of the inner areas of the large cities.  The story needs to be told.  (2/2/11)

THE LOWER LAKES

Lake Alexandrina is full.  The water laps almost to the top of jetties.  And the Murray mouth is open once again.  There are still vast volumes of water yet to make their way down the Murray, but already the region has been transformed after years in which the lower lakes shrank, sending locals to the point of despair, and raising doubts about the long term future of the region.

I took an Australia Day drive to Goolwa and then around to Clayton and on to Milang.  Yachts, jet skies and other craft are everywhere.  Paddle steamer Oscar  is doing extra tours, and even those are fully booked.  Picnickers on the foreshore at Milang sat eating and talking while children jumped off the small jetty.  It was a scene straight out of a Jeffrey Smart painting (Holiday Resort, 1946, is the one I have in mind).  With much more water still to arrive following summer rains in the eastern states, the lower lakes will be revived, and the fish, birds and other wildlife will regenerate. 

However the fundamental problems generated by the way we (mis)manage the waters of the Murray Darling Basin have not been resolved.  Never again should the situation reach the point where the entire ecosystem of the region is under serious threat, as it has been over the last few years.  The lower lakes are a significant part of the Murray Darling river system, and it in turn is the lifeblood of much of central and south-eastern Australia.   (26/1/11) 

MORE READINGS 1

The Fry Chronicles (Michael Joseph, London, 2010) was one of the Christmas gifts from my daughter and her partner.  Stephen Fry is a polymath, chronic twitterer and a ubiquitous presence on television.  In QI he is often funny, but essentially plays the straight (sic) man; the humour is provided by his panellists, when they are on song.

It took me a while to get into the book.  Initially I didn’t like the typeface, or his extended account of his taste for sweets as a child. But slowly I got into the rhythm, and ended up very pleased I persisted.  It is essentially the story of his life from university (Cambridge, of course) through to the day he started to experiment with illicit substances.  The diary of a very successful young man, as he tells us, often.

Fry comes across as disarmingly honest.  A bundle of contradictions.  He is an inveterate name dropper, and exudes a narcissistic pleasure in his own success. At the same time he is touchingly self deprecating, prone to jealousy, insecure and at times rather dark.  And he doesn’t like Robbie Coltrane.  I enjoyed his story and his quirky honesty.  (25/1/11)

ASIAN CITIES REVISITED

The editing of the chapters in our new book on Planning Asian Cities: Risks and Resilience is almost done.  Co-editor Steve Hamnett has been moving it along over the Christmas break.  My task is completing the introductory chapter.  I have a full draft, and I want to make a few improvements before passing it on to Steve at the end of the weekend. 

The hardest part is correctly identifying the key themes and saying something meaningful about them, as an introduction to the detailed analysis in the city essays.  Risk and resilience is one of several major themes in most chapters. 

The Queensland flood’s impact on Brisbane, Toowoomba and other towns tragically brought again to the public’s attention the risks of flooding and the so-called inland tsunami.  Flood mitigation strategies don’t always work as well as hoped because extreme weather events inevitably have the capacity to surprise.  Sadly, some politicians (and community hotheads) can’t seem to resist instantly blaming others for catastrophic events.  Just building more dams isn’t likely to be the answer.  

Now attention turns to the resilience of the Queenslanders worst affected.   A good recovery plan is needed, and in its formulation there must be a real opportunity for citizen input.  But there’s more.  We know that well organized communities are far more resilient than those that have no community structures or leadership or, indeed, a sense of community.  Judging by the first responses to the Brisbane floods, there is a high level of structured and unstructured community support in the cleanup.  Far different, it seems to me, than post Katrina New Orleans.

A number of the Asian cities we examine in the book have serious flood risks – Bangkok and Jakarta especially.  The government and the planners know it only too well.  In these cities, as we saw in the Serrana region on the northern edge of Rio de Janeiro in the last few days, the problems are compounded because it is the slum dwellers that live in the riskiest areas.  As the cities grow even larger, and the likelihood extreme weather events become more extreme, the risks get larger as well.  (15/1/11)

READING

As the weather heated up over the break, so I managed to read more.  Pre Christmas reading was an early Christmas gift, Robert Drewe’s The Best Australian Essays 2010 (Black Inc, Melbourne, 2010).  It’s not a vintage collection, being thin on humour and the feisty, iconoclastic writing I was hoping to read.  A highlight was Janet Hawley’s essay on the artist Charles Blackman.  Somewhat to my surprise I enjoyed Les Murray’s ‘Infinite Anthology’. 

On Boxing Day I browsed the local bookshop and found Anthony Reynolds Leonard Cohen: A Remarkable Life (Omnibus, London 2010).  I’m a life-long Cohen tragic, and managed to see his 2009 concert at McLaren Vale and the Hanging Rock concert in 2010.  Sheer bliss.  I never imagined I would get to see Cohen live on stage, even if it was outside on a blisteringly hot day in the southern Vales. 

Buying the new bio was a no-brainer.  It is an easy and absorbing read, and I was only occasionally distracted by the numerous misspellings and missing or misplaced words.  It appears it was never proof read. 

Much has been written about Leonard Cohen, and Reynolds has drawn on published sources and interviews with select contacts.  Cohen himself was not interviewed.  Nevertheless sitting in a sunny conservatory reading the book with Cohen’s music on at low volume in the background was an ethereal, sublime experience.

Cohen first emerged as a poet (a boudoir poet, some said), and briefly as a novelist, and then a songwriter.  However it was not until he reached his mid 30s that he became a singer.  Permeating his whole professional life was a firm belief in what he eloquently terms ‘the aristocracy of the intellect’.  He also comes across as polite, even gentlemanly, and humble, but stubborn and totally dedicated to his work.

He is a very skilled wordsmith; it is more evident in his lyrics than his poetry, though both are connected.  He worked with excellent musicians.  Cohen puts his emphasis on the emotional content of his words and music, not the technical precision.  It serves him well.  Much of the album Ten New Songs was recorded in Cohen’s home studio.  The jacuzzi was close by.  It was often accidentally left on and could be heard on some of the tracks; it had to be engineered out in the final production.

The book dwells a little too much on the details of Cohen’s recordings, and is thinner on his personal life.  Cohen says he was ‘blessed with amnesia’ when it comes to those matters.  As he said in ‘Anthem’, ‘there’s a crack in everything/that’s how the light gets in’. 

Cohen believes his two best songs are ‘If it be your will’ and ‘Hallelujah’.  If I had to choose just two, I would probably agree.  Particularly after hearing Antony’s cover version of the first and k d lang’s version of the second, which apparently brought tears to Cohen’s eyes when he first heard her sing it. 

I have been listening to ‘Suzanne’ and others since 1973 and I think he has produced great songs across the whole span of his career.  Backed up by some extraordinary musicians, such as Javier Mas, he also recently delivered a superb concert performances at 76.  He is an inspiration.  That’s probably why I enjoyed the book as much as I did.  (9/1/11)

IN 2011

Each New Year I mull over the issues that are going to shape the coming year. This year I have a short wish list. It replaces my New Year resolutions, with which I invariably struggle.

I wish that:

1. Revisions to student visa and immigration rules will create opportunities for talented graduates to spend longer in Australia and contribute to the enhancement of knowledge-based development.
   

2. Adelaide puts some effort into enhancing its knowledge city credentials.
   

3. The global economy continues to improve and accelerates much needed restructuring, particularly in the way the global finance system functions
   

4. There is a non-military solution to the situation in the Korean peninsula, with China supporting a reasonable reunification process.
   

That’s it.  (1/1/11)