The ¡°spark¡± that brought Canadian higher education to its knees offers insights into how to defend the sector, an Australian conference has heard.

Universities Canada chief executive Gabriel Miller said his country¡¯s ¡°panicked¡± and ¡°ham-fisted¡± treatment of international students had a silver lining. ¡°There are some very strong similarities between what¡¯s happening in higher education right now and what¡¯s happening in the housing market,¡± he told the Universities Australia Solutions Summit.

Housing and higher education are both ¡°vehicles for opportunity¡±, Miller explained. ¡°They¡¯re symbols of people¡¯s ambitions and¡­what they hope for their families. If those doors get closed, it can become a very potent political issue very quickly. Part of our challenge is to channel into that before we¡­reach disaster point.¡±

Miller said his country¡¯s longstanding housing problems had not been considered a ¡°political crisis¡± before 2023. ¡°Eighteen months ago¡­Canada¡¯s prime minister was saying housing is not a federal responsibility. Six months later, he was rewriting his immigration policy to deal with it. The point is, something that is a problem for people can crystallise and suddenly mobilise political action.¡±

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

He said that while foreign student admissions had been?capped around a third lower than previous enrolments, international education advocates had quickly realised ¡°we weren¡¯t going to hit those caps¡­because the rest of the world somehow got the message we weren¡¯t interested in attracting international students¡±.

While there had been ¡°abuses¡± in Canadian international education, the numbers of incoming PhD students had now fallen by one-fifth and master¡¯s students by almost one-third. ¡°Those are not the people we wanted to lose. When you decide you¡¯re going to start being more selective in who you recruit, it really matters who you recruit.¡±

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

Universities UK chief executive Vivienne Stern said such undercurrents were part of ¡°an inevitable cycle that you never win. You have periods in which there¡¯s liberalisation and periods in which there is tightening up.¡±

Stern said the sector must aspire to ¡°some kind of stability which allows government to manage the pressures that they face politically¡±.

¡°Politicians have been unseated by migration as a political issue. However liberal their instincts, I think there is a deep fear about what¡­losing the argument on migration means electorally. If we don¡¯t understand that those pressures are quite real, then we won¡¯t make any headway.¡±

Murdoch University vice-chancellor Andrew Deeks said the higher education sector¡¯s ¡°loss of social licence¡± was a phenomenon of Western democracies. ¡°Within Japan, and indeed within many of the eastern countries, there is no loss of trust in institutions,¡± said Deeks, who is also president of the International Association of Universities.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

¡°Within the broader Global South there is a desperate desire to get into universities, to get a university degree, with all the social mobility that that implies. The universities are still highly respected.¡±

Deeks said social licence issues had ¡°distracted¡± Western democratic governments from the economic spin-offs from higher education, just as the rest of the world underwent an ¡°acceleration¡± in research productivity by spending more on higher education and clawing their way up the university rankings.

He said the research productivity of Western democracies had ¡°stagnated¡± while it was ¡°accelerating dramatically¡± elsewhere, partly because artificial intelligence was helping scientists from non-English-speaking countries produce papers that journals would previously have rejected ¡°because the reviewers didn¡¯t understand the scientific content¡±.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com