Latham: ‘Overreliance’ on foreign income has compromised Australian universities
New South Wales One Nation Leader Mark Latham says the “overreliance” on foreign income from Chinese students has resulted compromised the integrity of Australia’s tertiary institutions.
A report from Human Rights Watch details how Chinese pro-democracy students were subject to in-class surveillance with “sensitive” topics such as Taiwan and Hong Kong listed as “off-limits”.
Mr Latham said the federal government should use the coronavirus pandemic to limit the intake of overseas students.
“It’s very clear we went overboard for many years in Australia with universities over reliant on Chinese foreign student income,” he told Sky News host Peta Credlin.
“Here in Sydney and NSW universities, 30 per cent of their total revenue came from Chinese foreign students so that’s an over-reliance that’s compromised just about every aspect of university activity.
“This is one massive problem and it’s just a reminder to us that as we come out of the COVID period, there should be no automatic reset of these overseas student numbers to go back to where we were.
“The truth is the universities were using this over-reliance on foreign income to build up their research entitlement and artificially inflated international standing and inflated the vice chancellor’s income.
“I think it’d be wise to put a cap on the overseas income, particularly out of China, and start to limit the capacity of the Chinese communist party to wreak havoc in our university sector.”
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