It has been claimed that some Australian universities have given permission to international students without any English-language skills. Government authorities have also confirmed it, so there is no room left for doubt.
There is a solution to this, that is, to look at the comparison rates at which domestic and international students pass their exams.
The chair of Australia University, Professor Margaret Gardner claimed that only deserving international students get the admission otherwise they would have higher failure rates than the domestic ones. In general, both of them have equal rates to pass the exams.
The Success of Freshmen International students
In 2016, International freshmen students failed about 15% of all the subjects whereas the failure of domestic students was 14% only. But in later years, there was more decrease in failure rates.
International students have a higher proportion of failure rates than the domestic ones because they mostly choose commerce, IT and engineering degrees. Domestic students have also a higher rate to fail these fields because these degrees are known to be difficult.
Recently in IT program, both types of students had failed almost 20% of the subjects and have equal results. Although this rate is trending down they still have high failure rates.
In an engineering degree, the failure rate is almost equal between both types of students and are not strikingly strong.
Business courses are the areas of interest for international students, so they are less likely to fail in them than domestic students. Still, there is a small difference between them.
For undergraduate global students, English Language skill is still not a big hindrance, that’s why we do not see a big difference between international and domestic students. But for postgraduate students, it is a complex story.
Contrasting Trends between Postgraduate International and National Students
Enrollment of postgraduate students is quite high because universities have dropped the admission requirements.
International commencing IT postgraduates have higher rates to fail than national students. In recent years, this gap was quite high. But this rate is low for undergraduates.
Until 2012, International students had low fail rates in engineering but afterward, this rate has increased and crossed the domestic students who have now lower failure rates than international students.
In the early years, both types of students in commerce courses had almost the same passing proportions but later International students out-numbered the failure rates.
Low English Standards
As per the trend, it is quite evident that requirements for the English language are not that high for taking admission into an Australian university. For example, no university has set the score limit above 6.5 on a scale of 1-9 for getting admission. The student visa is granted for even 5.5 scores.
Effects of Cheating and Lenient Marking on Fail Rates
There is not a big gap between a student’s cheating behaviors. In a survey, 33% of the students confessed that International students cheat in a fear to lose their visas.
Teacher’s survey reveals that submitted work is not even written by students themselves.
So, If plagiarism is not detected or ‘lenient marking’ on behalf of the teacher is observed then this could increase the international student passing rates.
Governmental Control
Although the government has taken strict actions in order to suppress these issue. They are seeing billions of dollars through this international export industry.
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