Mod 3.1: Narrating Personal Interest (Writing Task)

In my first ever job in Australia I worked as a casual lecturer for a private education institute in the Melbourne CBD. Most of the students were from India and China. Naïve as I was, I thought these students were there to learn about printing, pre-press and multimedia. The conditions and the learning material provided were next to non-existent. I had to come up with all the teaching material by myself, which made me stay up weeknights until 2 am and work on weekends to keep up with the class schedule.

I was frustrated with the institute and how students and employees were treated, so I went to see the manager and told him about my concerns. He replied quite honestly that it’s all about money, which confirmed what one of his recruiting agents, responsible for recruiting Indian students, had already told me.

I talked to the students about the situation, but they seemed to be fine with it. All they wanted was a Certificate IV in printing; the requirement for Permanent Residency (PR). The institute guaranteed a successful graduation and only one of the students I knew seemed to be keen to actually work in this profession in Australia.

Later that year both Government and the Department of Immigration and Internal Affairs (DIMIA) became aware of the exploitation of mainly Indian and Chinese students. The institute I worked for was amongst the first to be shut down later that year. But having paid lots of money for their courses, the situation for students only got worse as they were left in limbo, Unable to finish their courses. Finally other private institutes that were not affected by the closures took them in.

Certainly, things have changed since then. DIMIA has come up with an additional set of regulations, many privately run education institutes, also nicknamed visa factories, have been shut down and it is much harder for foreign students to study in Australia.

Since January 2009 I work at Careers & Employment, a unit of the department of student services at Swinburne University. We run our own job-database and have direct dealings with other student services like Housing and Finance. Digging myself in, trying to overlook the complexity of the entire issue about the welfare of international students in Australia, I realized that there is more than meets the eye. I think it’s important to make transparent how many faces the problem actually has. Be it jobs, accommodation, education, or immigration – international students are still disadvantaged, left alone or treated badly.