Many English speaking countries are seeing a huge influx of international students to their universities. Australia is no different, with just under 230,000 international students enrolled in its universities in June 2016.
Universities love international students as they have to pay their fees up front rather than being deferred through HECS. Because of this, they try to market the experience to potential students as a wholly positive one such as the video below.
However this is not always the case. These students face issues that are not as common with most domestic students. Being so far away from home, with no support network and in an unfamiliar culture is a big thing for these students to deal with. Marginson (2012) suggests that Australian students are not helping with this problem as many are not interested with interacting with the international students which increases the isolation that they feel. This leads to many interacting with other students from their country which takes away from the experience they should be enjoying.
This is compounded by the pressures they have from home. These students don’t have the option of deferring their fees through HECS so they have to pay upfront. This places a large amount of stress on them as they are dealing with heavy expectations from their families back home to do well due to the large financial outlay
The mix of cultures at university is one of the great experiences that we benefit from while we are here. As local students, we need to understand the difficulties that many of these international students are facing and do our best to make them feel a part of the community. Without the international students, fees for domestic students will rise and the current multiculturalism at universities will cease to exist.
Sources
Marginson, Simon 2012, ‘International education as self-formation: Morphing a profit making business into an intercultural experience’
Image – https://www.postgrad.com/blog/new-rules-for-international-students-in-the-uk/
Hayden Skates 
