Mauritius Message Board: Re: Struggle of Mauritian Students in Australia

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Re: Struggle of Mauritian Students in Australia

Posted by Jean-Noel on 17/8/2008, 10:52 pm, in reply to "Struggle of Mauritian Students in Australia"
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I wanted to offer a response to the post by Tony on the situation of international students in Australia.
I agree with you that sometimes the agent is unfairly blamed for everything that goes wrong with international students experiences in their new country. You are right that Mauritian students sometimes don't take instructions and advice seriously and come with $500 instead of $3000 in their pockets, as might have been advised to them.
As to the welfare of Mauritian students here, almost all universities and TAFEs have an office of international student service that students can go to to obtain assistance, advice and practical help. Are they utilising this resource?
As far as agents, I believe that prospective Mauritian students would be better off if they contacted universities directly instead of going through an agent. It is not that difficult to do and it is free.
We need to realise that education agents are business people, they make money by placing students in certain universities, so of course they are going to try to sell their service to them and make them think that they have to go through them.
When I was the Director of International Student Services for a major university in California, USA for 8 years, I heard all the horror stories of students paying thousands of dollars to agents to get them admitted, and I used to say to them why did you not apply directly? Many said they did not know that they could..agents are aggressively selling their services out there.
The university I worked for in the USA enrolled around 3000 international students and I was responsible for overseeing the services to them.
Finally, I want to point out some gross errors in your numbers quoted Tony. There are not 480,000 international students in australia, the current number is 392,632, and that is for all sectors - uni, TAFE, language schools, high schools, etc.. And there are definitely not 5,000 Mauritian students in Australia. The official number is 2773. My figures are from the Australian Education International Student Data, YTD June 2008 available on the Australian government website.
What is telling and should be pointed out to the Mauritian community in Australia is that Mauritius represents the 23rd country with the largest number of international students out of 195 countries represented here. The number of Mauritian students in Australia has more than doubled in the last 5 years, there were 1125 in 2003. In fact, now Mauritius has more students here than France or Sweden or Switzeland. There are more Mauritian students here than from the whole African continent and Indian Ocean Islands combined. Seychelles has 146, the Maldives have 169, Reunion has 25 and Madagascar has 8.
So signs are that Mauritian students are definitely on the increase in Australia, and we should expect that some will find themselves in some kind of difficulties. However, I think one of the best ways we can help them is to encourage them avoid using agents altogether..they need to have confidence that they can do some research about courses themselves and apply directly to the universities. The agents are telling them that the whole process is so complicated, that they need to go through them..for a certain fee of course. But it is not complicated and they will be better served on the long run by doing the leg work themselves.
For those who choose to engage an agent, check them out carefully and be realistic that it may not be part of the agent's responsibilities to help you avoid or fix all the possible problems that could occur in the new country. Their job is to provide you with accurate information, process your application and other paperwork and get you on your way. They are not social workers to help you with every problem.
Once here, Mauritian students should avail themselves to the free services offered by their International Student Office on campus, which indeed employ social workers and other helping professionals. They already pay for this service in their university fees. Workers form the international office on campus are skilled to assist students from all countries in their transition to their new country.
sorry for this long message but it's a domain that I have some knowledge of since as a Mauritian I was an international student in America myself years ago and was employed as an International Student Advisor for many years.