澳洲广播电台第七集：教育国际化(页 1) - 澳洲留学移民 - 澳大利亚广播电台 -
2006-8-7 03:44
城市童话
澳洲广播电台第七集：教育国际化
从1980到2000年间，由于对正规学历的要求日益提高，澳大利亚劳动人口中接受过高等教育的人数随之增加。这一时期里来澳大利亚求学的海外学生人数也大幅度上升。
[color=Red]详细内容请看二,三,四楼[/color]
从1980到2000年间，由于对正规学历的要求日益提高，澳大利亚劳动人口中接受过高等教育的人数随之增加。这一时期里来澳大利亚求学的海外学生人数也大幅度上升。
[color=Red]详细内容请看二,三,四楼[/color]
2006-8-7 03:45
城市童话
中文详细内容
[quote]
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
大家好，我是苏·斯拉梅，欢迎收听“今日澳洲”。
（插播音乐：艾丽丝·库柏的《放学了》）
在今天的节目里，您将收听到与澳大利亚教育国际化相关的内容。
在最近的二十年里，越来越多年龄在二十到三十岁的澳大利亚人接受了高等教育。
当然，与此同时，来到南半球的澳大利亚攻读大学学业的留学生人数也在不断增加。目前，留学生占澳大利亚大学在校生总数的百分之十八以上。
这么高的留学生比例在其他国家是不多见的，比如，在美国的大学中，留学生也只占大学生总人数的百分之三。
我采访了墨尔本莫纳什大学的教育学教授西蒙·马金森，问他是不是这就是所谓的“澳大利亚教育的国际化”。
[b]西蒙·马金森：[/b]
教育的国际化可以有不同的解释。这可以用来表示各专业中非澳大利亚成分的提高。比如说，我们在课本中引用更多国外的实例，也可以指外籍教学人员或者是留学生比例的提高。这个词还可以指澳大利亚对异域文化采取了更加开放的态度。但是人们还是会把教育的国际化进行传统化的诠释，在这种情况下的含义是增进国际间的相互理解，教育传播和文化交流，把世界各个国家和人民更密切的联系在一起。这些都是大学和其他的教育机构所担当的积极使命。另外，教育的国际化也可以特指在大学中招收更多的留学生。我是说，当你听到大学校长说我们有必要提高国际化的比例时，他的真实意思是说我们需要招收更多缴纳全额学费的留学生，以此来增加学校的财政收入。
[b]丹尼斯：[/b]
你有时还会听到有人说……说什么“噢，这家伙抢了我的饭碗”之类的话。这种说法让人感觉怪怪的，要知道，我是来澳大利亚读书的留学生。我们来到这里，在这工作，也把钱花在你们这里了，这可是好事啊。经过一些接触之后，你会渐渐认识和了解很多人，会觉得他们也挺可爱的。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
在最近的几年里，像来自马来西亚的丹尼斯这样的海外自费留学生每年为澳大利亚大学带来了超过了十亿澳元的直接经济收入。
但是除了单纯的金钱外，“国际化”也为澳大利亚年轻一代人学习和掌握跨文化交际技能提供了一个契机。他们结识来自不同国家的留学生，接触了不同的文化，受益匪浅。
霍默·勒格朗教授二十八年前从美国来到澳大利亚，并在澳大利亚的几所大学里任过职。他现在是莫纳什大学文学院院长。莫纳什大学是澳大利亚留学生比例较高的大学之一。
[b]霍默·勒格朗教授：[/b]
当然，对于澳大利亚本国学生来说，他们不可能每个人都有在国外学习的经历。但是，由于有大量留学生入读澳大利亚大学，他们可以接触有着不同思想、不同文化和不同背景的其他国家的人，这是非常有用和重要的体验。因此，留学生在很多方面丰富了澳大利亚的教育体制，而不仅仅是增加了学校的财政收入这么简单。
（插播音乐：《动感》，选自《行星世界》专辑）
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
普鲁·霍恩参加了被简称为“J.E.T”的日本交流和教学项目。由此她发现教育的国际化有助于更好的开展跨文化交流。
普鲁·霍恩在日本学习生活了三年之后，现在又是如何理解“国际化”的呢？
[b]普鲁·霍恩：[/b]
我还是觉得国际化是一个很难解释的概念。但是从我的亲身经历，从我在日本的三年经历和在邻近国家和地区旅行的体验来看，我觉得从我的经历所能得出的最重要的一点，就是我对不同的文化和传统习俗有了更深的了解，就是这些差异，我也意识到了这些差异的重要性，以及尊重这些差异的重要性。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
澳大利亚政府每年都派出四百名学生参加日本交流和教学项目（亦称JET），普鲁·霍恩就是其中的一名。JET是日本政府在一九八七年启动的项目，其目的是让日本人民通过与外国人的接触，促使日本社会变得更加开放。
普鲁·霍恩目前在与澳大利亚大陆隔海相望的塔斯马尼亚州的塔斯马尼亚大学“学生旅行办公室”工作。正是她在日本当“老外”的经历让她更加了解这些走进她办公室的留学生需要什么。
[b]普鲁·霍恩：[/b]
我现在变得对文化十分敏感。我能很快弄清楚这些留学生来自哪些国家，讲什么语言，什么样的文化因素会影响到他们在澳大利亚的学习和生活，他们会如何为人处事，他们说话时的真实含义是什么。我非常理解那些在澳大利亚的外国人，理解他们心里的恐慌、恐惧和孤独。要知道，他们在自己的国家说自己的语言时，会表达流畅，能说会道，大胆自信，自己会照顾自己。而在这里，他们有时连标志都看不懂，各种能力一下子退化到了小孩子的水平。但我想说的是，待在澳大利亚和待在日本，这中间有很大的区别。在日本，外国人即使只会说几个日语词，日本人也会大加褒赏。如果你用错了敬语形式，他们也会予以原谅。或者说，你没说对是因为你仅仅只会最基本的日语，但是你向他们表明你已经非常努力了。表明你已经非常努力对他们来说比完全说对话更为重要。所以，我认为我们澳大利亚人应该在这个方面向日本多学习学习。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
那我们现在来看看那些在澳大利亚学习的年轻的日本留学生，听听他们是如何进行自我调整来适应在国外的生活的。
[b]日本留学生：[/b]
我的名字叫府坂，来自日本。我在澳大利亚已经三年了。我发现对我来说很难交上澳大利亚朋友，因为我的英语不是很好，但是现在已经不错了。你要记住不要害怕犯语言错误，这可是你的第二语言。多出去走走，结交不同的人，这样你就有经验了。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
要是留学生能够更好地融入构成当代澳大利亚社会的不同文化中，他们就更容易适应在澳大利亚的学习和生活。
一位来自马来西亚的留学生是这样描述自己在墨尔本大学的学习经历的。
[b]马来西亚学生：[/b]
对我来说主要的问题在于如何适应这儿的气候，如何适应不同的文化、不同的功课量以及全新的授课方式。这些零零碎碎的小事加起来，压力就大了，比如除了要习惯不同的口音、教学方法，克服语言障碍，还得适应新环境，结交新朋友。现在可以说我已经对这儿很适应了，我真的很喜欢这里的生活，墨尔本有着多元的文化，又是个国际化的大都市，这正是我来这儿的初衷。我猜这也正是许多留学生希望毕业后能够留下来工作和生活的原因。我们对这儿的人、这儿的生活、文化很习惯了，还有这里的朋友。我很喜欢这一点，这是个开放型的社会，与我的老家相比更加客观公平。在这里，期望值不会那么高，也就不会感到那么大的压力，你可以做自己想做的事儿，不会有人对你指手画脚，说你古怪。作为社会的一员，你尽可保留自己的特色，这正是我最喜欢的，就这些……。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
接下来，让我们听听来自香港的伯纳德和纳撒尼尔向希望来澳大利亚读书的海外学生提出的几点建议。
[b]伯纳德：[/b]
当然了，对留学生来说，澳大利亚是个学习的好地方，但你们得学会照顾自己，要是还不够成熟的话，你交朋友时可得慎重，出门在外靠朋友嘛。当然，需要帮助的时候，你可不要犹豫，就去校学生处寻求帮助好了，他们真的很友好。
[b]纳撒尼尔：[/b]
在学习上也是同样，你得主动点儿，有困难就自己提出来，不然没人会主动帮你的。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
在澳大利亚的留学生大多来自新加坡、香港、马来西亚和印度尼西亚。下面就请莫纳什大学文学院院长霍默·勒格朗给我们讲一讲，各大学都采取了那些措施帮助留学生尽快适应在澳大利亚的学习与生活。
[b]霍默·勒格朗教授：[/b]
也许我不能代表别的大学，但我想莫纳什大学在向留学生提供帮助方面还是做得不错的，我们在留学生来澳大利亚之前给他们邮寄简报，好让他们对这里的情况和最初几周的安排有所了解。此外，我们还举办新生入校情况介绍活动，我想所有学校都有这一类的服务，至少我所熟悉的大学都有，会有专职人员为留学生提供语言、学习方面的咨询和帮助，向以英语为第二语言的留学生教授英语技能，并介绍一些重要文化差异。我认为这种对文化差异的重视贯穿在了我们文学院的知识体系和教学方法之中。比方说东南亚或北亚的留学生，当然不仅仅是他们，但他们的确不大从不同角度理解和看待某一历史事件，或者在我自己的教学领域里，他们不太习惯用不同的理论分析理解某一科学变化。他们所习惯的是获得答案、记住答案再重复答案的学习模式。这样评论有点不好，过于简化了，太简单化了。但是，这的确是我们在教学中所面临并要解决的问题。
[b]莱恩：[/b]
我在大学学的是英语，这也正是我来这儿的原因，在这儿的日常生活里能更多地接触到英语。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
这位是埃尔莱恩阿瓦蒂，澳大利亚朋友都叫她莱恩。来自印尼东部的莱恩成功地申请到了澳大利亚政府奖学金。
莱恩，你刚刚提到你的儿子现在也在澳大利亚上学。能给我们讲讲他在澳大利亚的生活情况以及在当地学校和澳大利亚孩子们一起学习的经历吗？来这儿之前，在他看来，澳大利亚一定是个很遥远的地方，而在这儿的学习生活有没有改变他对澳大利亚的看法呢？
[b]莱恩：[/b]
我还记得他刚来上学的时候，他感到有些意外。有一天他对我说，妈妈，班上的同学上课时不礼貌。我问，怎么不礼貌啦？他说，他们没完没了地提问题，又讲话又争论，还评论老师上课的内容，竟然还能走出教室。于是我就尽力向他解释，他们就是这个样子，这是他们国家的文化。后来有一天老师告诉我，我儿子达喀的成绩不太好，特别是口语成绩，课上发言不积极。事实上达喀在课堂讨论时不太发言。我又只好尽力向老师解释，这就是我们的学习方式，我们学英语就习惯于问答式的教学，你知道，没人教我们批判地看问题，分析问题或是设身处地地想问题，等等这一些。达喀在这儿学习已经快三年了，耳濡目染间，他对澳大利亚的文化、习惯，尤其是对学校生活的看法发生了很大变化。现在我可以放心让他自己写文章了，因为他已经会评论了，而且也试着在班上发言了。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
这是来自印尼的埃尔莱恩阿瓦蒂，她获得了澳大利亚国际发展署颁发的奖学金，正在澳大利亚读书。
社会学家鲍勃·康奈尔曾在澳大利亚、美国、欧洲各大学任教，目前在悉尼大学讲授教育学。他希望澳大利亚更多地将教育视为一种“辅助手段”而非一种“商业行为”……
[b]鲍勃·康奈尔：[/b]
如果我们把教育定位成交易，那就偏离了文化交流这一主题。还是有很多人愿意慷慨援助发展中国家的，关键是我们能否建立有效的机制来实现人们的愿望。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
现在，教育是澳大利亚的第八大出口产业。
在有些大学，留学生所缴的学费已占学生缴费收入总额的一半以上。
一九八五年，澳大利亚的大学首次获得许可，可以自主决定留学生的收费标准。诸如西蒙·马金森教授这些专门从事教育研究的学者认为，大学经费日益依赖于留学生，而政府也减少了对高等教育的投入，这两种现象绝非巧合。
[b]西蒙·马金森：[/b]
政府最初先是缩减了教育投入，同时又取消了对留学生的收费限制。各大学得到政府的允许，走出国门招收海外学生，并且只需保证所收学费为完全商业性收费且不对留学生提供补助，就可自行制定收费标准。招收留学生的人数也没有限制。由于招收国内学生受到政府教育经费和院校负荷标准等限制，所以招生的人数有一定限额。但对海外学生的招生人数却没有限制。这就为各大学增加收入提供了一个小小的窗口，而他们逐步扩大了这个窗口，也因此获得了更多的收入。自从各大学扩大海外招生以来，留学生人数已经从一九九零年的大约一万二千人上升到目前的大约十万人，而留学生所缴纳的费用已经占了大学所收全部费用的十分之一，这种状况当然使政府能进一步削减教育经费。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
澳大利亚政府现在面临的一个关键问题就是在缩减教育投入若干年后，是恢复联邦预算中对大学的投入，还是进一步放松管制，让各大学不仅对海外学生而且对国内学生自行设定收费标准。
下面再来听听霍默·勒格朗教授的看法……
[b]霍默·勒格朗教授：[/b]
如果是在海外学生中很受欢迎的大学，就很有可能这么做。比如墨尔本大学，或者是莫纳什大学，或者是昆士兰州州立大学，这些学校的法律专业就能招收到很多的自费学生。当然，这样的结果可能是好的，也可能不好。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
鲍勃·康奈尔教授就认为这样做的结果是不好的。像鲍勃·康奈尔这样的教育研究人士指出，接受高等教育比例最高的前十个地区都集中在悉尼和墨尔本这两个澳大利亚最大城市的最富裕的郊区。
[b]鲍勃·康奈尔：[/b]
我们的研究发现，来自富裕家庭的孩子，当然包括来自富裕郊区的孩子，会有更多的机会进入大学；而在大学里，他们又会有更好的机会学习好的专业以在将来得到最体面且收入丰厚的工作。这种在受教育机会上阶级间的不平等现象根深蒂固，一直是困扰好几代澳大利亚人的最大的教育问题之一。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
不过在我的有生之年，而且在很多生育高峰期出生的这一辈人中，大家都能去念当地的高中，也肯定能够受到一定的教育；如果智力不错的话，还能有机会继续深造读大学。这种情况发生变化了吗？
[b]鲍勃·康奈尔：[/b]
没有，情况还一样。我认为我们仍然有相当不错的中等教育，而且不同社会背景的孩子也能够受到高等教育。有所改变的是在更高层次上的竞争，选学最好的大学专业时面临的竞争。在这种竞争中，一个人调动家庭和学校资源的能力变得十分重要。另外一个变化与私立学校有关，政府加大了对私立学校的资助力度，媒体也给与了更多支持，这就导致了对公立教育投入的逐步缩减。所以我认为，这些做法都毫无疑问地扩大了社会差距，尤其是教育体制内的阶级之间的差距。所以说，现有体制产生的不平等比从前更为严重。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
在澳大利亚大城市以外的辽阔乡村地区，是否能够负担得起到城市接受高等教育和取得入学资格一样，是一大难题。
比尔·贾布尔是维多利亚州高尔本河谷大谢伯顿市的市长。该地区位于维多利亚州首府墨尔本东北二百公里处，是一个集约型水果和农产品种植区。
[b]比尔·贾布尔：[/b]
噢，实在是很大的开支……我有两个女儿都决定不去墨尔本念书。我做了个比较，发现自己真是幸运，一个女儿决定留在这里，一个要到另一个地区中心去读书。比较一下这些费用和去墨尔本的费用吧，包括住宿、吃饭，还有各种各样需要在墨尔本支付的租金和购买东西的费用，供孩子们在二百公里外的墨尔本念书太难了，那实在是笔很大、很大的花销。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
是的。我想留学生也会有同感。他们要从更远的地方到这里学习。无论如何，情况都是一样的，都是在一个陌生环境中给自己安个家，对吧？
[b]比尔·贾布尔：[/b]
确实如此。在我们这儿，没有定时的公共交通设施。火车倒确实有，可是光单程就要两个半小时，你总不能为了上一门课每天都来回奔波吧。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
大谢伯顿市的乡村地方政府正牵头敦促联邦政府出资在那里兴建一个高等教育中心。他们希望看到中学毕业生能在那里学到日趋复杂的农产品出口业和食品加工厂所需的技能。
[b]比尔·贾布尔：[/b]
我们这里是个密集型农业和园艺业地区，一直以来，人们都不愁找不到工作。中学毕业后，马上就能在果园或农场找到工作，挤牛奶或者修剪果树。所以整个情况就是，只要你愿意，找到干力气活儿的工作是没问题的，但是脑力工作却没得到同样的发展。我们这里有好几家澳大利亚最大的食品加工厂，他们聘用各种类型的科学家、化学家、marketing人员、会计师，这些具有高等学历的人才正是企业发展壮大所需要的。所以，对体力劳动的需求正在减少，而对脑力劳动的需求逐渐增加。我们与其它地区不同的另外一点就是，我想，这里百分之四十二的人口都来自非英语国家，百分之十的人口是原住民。这两部分人都不愿意离开这个自己视作家园的地方。所以他们只愿意接受本地所能提供的高等教育，而不会到其他地方去。这样他们就错过了很多机会。事实上，他们也可能从来没有想过要接受高等教育。
[b]科林·伯克：[/b]
公平地说，直到现在，我觉得在大学里读书的原住民学生大多都属于我称之为“再读生’的情况。他们可能在读九年级、十年级或八年级时就早早离开学校，工作了大约五年或十年之后，意识到需要深造一下，于是就又到大学里来读书。他们这种情况在原住民学生中占的比例最大。
（插播音乐： 选自专辑《行星世界》中的《动感》）
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
评价澳大利亚原住民的教育状况，科林·伯克教授是最合适的人选。作为一位原住民教师和学术研究人员，他多次向联邦政府提交了关于如何提高澳大利亚原住民中学和大学教育成果的报告。
令伯克教授担忧的是，只有不到三分之一的澳大利亚原住民完成了中学学业，而非原住民人口完成中学学业的比例则占到总数的百分之七十六。并且，即使在那些确实接受大学教育的原住民学生中也没有几个来自偏远或丛林地区。
[b]科林·伯克：[/b]
你会发现大多数澳大利亚原住民大学生都来自大城市或离城市相当近的乡村地区。他们有较好的机会接受教育，完全没遇到什么障碍。而北部或更偏远地区的原住民却很少有教育机会，只是在有的情况下会给他们开设专门的课程。南澳州立大学就在彼特间德加若族（Pitjandjara）地区专门开设了现场师资培训课程，昆士兰州北部的詹姆斯·库克大学也开设了这样的课程，有一些这样的例子。但是，有些大学的校园离原住民居住区很远，却在没有社区支持的情况下要求学生到学校来学习，我觉得这种做法是注定要失败的，也没有得到多少响应，因为当地的原住民没有几个掌握了必要的技能和接受了足够的教育，从而能够按照澳大利亚南部各大学的要求以正常方式攻读大学学业。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
谢伯顿市提出的“学习中心”建议，对那里的原住民和少数民族群体来说应该是个非常好的消息。
科林·伯克的研究表明，对那些不用离开当地（通常是澳大利亚偏远的地区）就可以接受教育的原住民学生来说，他们的成功率超过百分之七十，相比之下，在城市大学校园的中接受教育而获得成功的原住民学生比例仅为百分之五十。
比尔·贾布尔的谢伯顿小组正同澳大利亚主要的远程教育机构“澳大利亚开放大学”合作。该机构的口号是‘教育来到你身边……’
[b]比尔·贾布尔：[/b]
我们有灵活方便的教室、视频链接设备和计算机中心以及所有诸如此类的东西，另外我们还想提供一些设备。这样学生们就能进入大学中心彼此结识与交流，感受到大学生活的氛围。所以我们会在某些情况下采用传统的教堂授课方式，然后再采用一些创新的方式，当然也会运用传统的远程教学模式。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
可以想象，你们也许会有一种反向吸引力，城里人可能会愿意在更轻松的乡村环境里学习吧？
[b]比尔·贾布尔：[/b]
嗯，是的，有些学生甚至会从墨尔本经高速公路赶来，在维多利亚州乡间的高尔本河之滨的乡村环境里住下来，这完全在我的意料之中。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
比尔，那么留学生呢？
[b]比尔·贾布尔：[/b]
我们欢迎海外学生到这里来。我们大谢伯顿城的文化非常多元化，最近有许多中东人移居到这里，之前有过大批的意大利人、阿尔巴尼亚人和土耳其人。除了墨尔本大都市地区外，我们这里的原住民人口是最多的。所以，这是一个非常丰富多彩的多元文化社区，我们欢迎海外学子来学习。”
（插播音乐：选自专辑《世界节奏》中的《迪吉里杜管与古筝合奏曲》）
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
刚刚讲话的这位是比尔·贾布尔，他是维多利亚州大谢伯顿市的市长。
您正在收听的是澳大利亚广播电台的系列节目“今日澳洲”，我是苏·斯拉梅。下次节目“面向亚洲”将介绍我们的中学和大学如何努力让澳大利亚年轻人更加了解亚洲，我期待您的参与。
感谢赖安·厄甘提供的技术制作，感谢墨尔本莫纳什大学全国澳大利亚研究中心给予的学术指导。
[/quote]
[quote]
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
大家好，我是苏·斯拉梅，欢迎收听“今日澳洲”。
（插播音乐：艾丽丝·库柏的《放学了》）
在今天的节目里，您将收听到与澳大利亚教育国际化相关的内容。
在最近的二十年里，越来越多年龄在二十到三十岁的澳大利亚人接受了高等教育。
当然，与此同时，来到南半球的澳大利亚攻读大学学业的留学生人数也在不断增加。目前，留学生占澳大利亚大学在校生总数的百分之十八以上。
这么高的留学生比例在其他国家是不多见的，比如，在美国的大学中，留学生也只占大学生总人数的百分之三。
我采访了墨尔本莫纳什大学的教育学教授西蒙·马金森，问他是不是这就是所谓的“澳大利亚教育的国际化”。
[b]西蒙·马金森：[/b]
教育的国际化可以有不同的解释。这可以用来表示各专业中非澳大利亚成分的提高。比如说，我们在课本中引用更多国外的实例，也可以指外籍教学人员或者是留学生比例的提高。这个词还可以指澳大利亚对异域文化采取了更加开放的态度。但是人们还是会把教育的国际化进行传统化的诠释，在这种情况下的含义是增进国际间的相互理解，教育传播和文化交流，把世界各个国家和人民更密切的联系在一起。这些都是大学和其他的教育机构所担当的积极使命。另外，教育的国际化也可以特指在大学中招收更多的留学生。我是说，当你听到大学校长说我们有必要提高国际化的比例时，他的真实意思是说我们需要招收更多缴纳全额学费的留学生，以此来增加学校的财政收入。
[b]丹尼斯：[/b]
你有时还会听到有人说……说什么“噢，这家伙抢了我的饭碗”之类的话。这种说法让人感觉怪怪的，要知道，我是来澳大利亚读书的留学生。我们来到这里，在这工作，也把钱花在你们这里了，这可是好事啊。经过一些接触之后，你会渐渐认识和了解很多人，会觉得他们也挺可爱的。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
在最近的几年里，像来自马来西亚的丹尼斯这样的海外自费留学生每年为澳大利亚大学带来了超过了十亿澳元的直接经济收入。
但是除了单纯的金钱外，“国际化”也为澳大利亚年轻一代人学习和掌握跨文化交际技能提供了一个契机。他们结识来自不同国家的留学生，接触了不同的文化，受益匪浅。
霍默·勒格朗教授二十八年前从美国来到澳大利亚，并在澳大利亚的几所大学里任过职。他现在是莫纳什大学文学院院长。莫纳什大学是澳大利亚留学生比例较高的大学之一。
[b]霍默·勒格朗教授：[/b]
当然，对于澳大利亚本国学生来说，他们不可能每个人都有在国外学习的经历。但是，由于有大量留学生入读澳大利亚大学，他们可以接触有着不同思想、不同文化和不同背景的其他国家的人，这是非常有用和重要的体验。因此，留学生在很多方面丰富了澳大利亚的教育体制，而不仅仅是增加了学校的财政收入这么简单。
（插播音乐：《动感》，选自《行星世界》专辑）
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
普鲁·霍恩参加了被简称为“J.E.T”的日本交流和教学项目。由此她发现教育的国际化有助于更好的开展跨文化交流。
普鲁·霍恩在日本学习生活了三年之后，现在又是如何理解“国际化”的呢？
[b]普鲁·霍恩：[/b]
我还是觉得国际化是一个很难解释的概念。但是从我的亲身经历，从我在日本的三年经历和在邻近国家和地区旅行的体验来看，我觉得从我的经历所能得出的最重要的一点，就是我对不同的文化和传统习俗有了更深的了解，就是这些差异，我也意识到了这些差异的重要性，以及尊重这些差异的重要性。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
澳大利亚政府每年都派出四百名学生参加日本交流和教学项目（亦称JET），普鲁·霍恩就是其中的一名。JET是日本政府在一九八七年启动的项目，其目的是让日本人民通过与外国人的接触，促使日本社会变得更加开放。
普鲁·霍恩目前在与澳大利亚大陆隔海相望的塔斯马尼亚州的塔斯马尼亚大学“学生旅行办公室”工作。正是她在日本当“老外”的经历让她更加了解这些走进她办公室的留学生需要什么。
[b]普鲁·霍恩：[/b]
我现在变得对文化十分敏感。我能很快弄清楚这些留学生来自哪些国家，讲什么语言，什么样的文化因素会影响到他们在澳大利亚的学习和生活，他们会如何为人处事，他们说话时的真实含义是什么。我非常理解那些在澳大利亚的外国人，理解他们心里的恐慌、恐惧和孤独。要知道，他们在自己的国家说自己的语言时，会表达流畅，能说会道，大胆自信，自己会照顾自己。而在这里，他们有时连标志都看不懂，各种能力一下子退化到了小孩子的水平。但我想说的是，待在澳大利亚和待在日本，这中间有很大的区别。在日本，外国人即使只会说几个日语词，日本人也会大加褒赏。如果你用错了敬语形式，他们也会予以原谅。或者说，你没说对是因为你仅仅只会最基本的日语，但是你向他们表明你已经非常努力了。表明你已经非常努力对他们来说比完全说对话更为重要。所以，我认为我们澳大利亚人应该在这个方面向日本多学习学习。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
那我们现在来看看那些在澳大利亚学习的年轻的日本留学生，听听他们是如何进行自我调整来适应在国外的生活的。
[b]日本留学生：[/b]
我的名字叫府坂，来自日本。我在澳大利亚已经三年了。我发现对我来说很难交上澳大利亚朋友，因为我的英语不是很好，但是现在已经不错了。你要记住不要害怕犯语言错误，这可是你的第二语言。多出去走走，结交不同的人，这样你就有经验了。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
要是留学生能够更好地融入构成当代澳大利亚社会的不同文化中，他们就更容易适应在澳大利亚的学习和生活。
一位来自马来西亚的留学生是这样描述自己在墨尔本大学的学习经历的。
[b]马来西亚学生：[/b]
对我来说主要的问题在于如何适应这儿的气候，如何适应不同的文化、不同的功课量以及全新的授课方式。这些零零碎碎的小事加起来，压力就大了，比如除了要习惯不同的口音、教学方法，克服语言障碍，还得适应新环境，结交新朋友。现在可以说我已经对这儿很适应了，我真的很喜欢这里的生活，墨尔本有着多元的文化，又是个国际化的大都市，这正是我来这儿的初衷。我猜这也正是许多留学生希望毕业后能够留下来工作和生活的原因。我们对这儿的人、这儿的生活、文化很习惯了，还有这里的朋友。我很喜欢这一点，这是个开放型的社会，与我的老家相比更加客观公平。在这里，期望值不会那么高，也就不会感到那么大的压力，你可以做自己想做的事儿，不会有人对你指手画脚，说你古怪。作为社会的一员，你尽可保留自己的特色，这正是我最喜欢的，就这些……。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
接下来，让我们听听来自香港的伯纳德和纳撒尼尔向希望来澳大利亚读书的海外学生提出的几点建议。
[b]伯纳德：[/b]
当然了，对留学生来说，澳大利亚是个学习的好地方，但你们得学会照顾自己，要是还不够成熟的话，你交朋友时可得慎重，出门在外靠朋友嘛。当然，需要帮助的时候，你可不要犹豫，就去校学生处寻求帮助好了，他们真的很友好。
[b]纳撒尼尔：[/b]
在学习上也是同样，你得主动点儿，有困难就自己提出来，不然没人会主动帮你的。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
在澳大利亚的留学生大多来自新加坡、香港、马来西亚和印度尼西亚。下面就请莫纳什大学文学院院长霍默·勒格朗给我们讲一讲，各大学都采取了那些措施帮助留学生尽快适应在澳大利亚的学习与生活。
[b]霍默·勒格朗教授：[/b]
也许我不能代表别的大学，但我想莫纳什大学在向留学生提供帮助方面还是做得不错的，我们在留学生来澳大利亚之前给他们邮寄简报，好让他们对这里的情况和最初几周的安排有所了解。此外，我们还举办新生入校情况介绍活动，我想所有学校都有这一类的服务，至少我所熟悉的大学都有，会有专职人员为留学生提供语言、学习方面的咨询和帮助，向以英语为第二语言的留学生教授英语技能，并介绍一些重要文化差异。我认为这种对文化差异的重视贯穿在了我们文学院的知识体系和教学方法之中。比方说东南亚或北亚的留学生，当然不仅仅是他们，但他们的确不大从不同角度理解和看待某一历史事件，或者在我自己的教学领域里，他们不太习惯用不同的理论分析理解某一科学变化。他们所习惯的是获得答案、记住答案再重复答案的学习模式。这样评论有点不好，过于简化了，太简单化了。但是，这的确是我们在教学中所面临并要解决的问题。
[b]莱恩：[/b]
我在大学学的是英语，这也正是我来这儿的原因，在这儿的日常生活里能更多地接触到英语。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
这位是埃尔莱恩阿瓦蒂，澳大利亚朋友都叫她莱恩。来自印尼东部的莱恩成功地申请到了澳大利亚政府奖学金。
莱恩，你刚刚提到你的儿子现在也在澳大利亚上学。能给我们讲讲他在澳大利亚的生活情况以及在当地学校和澳大利亚孩子们一起学习的经历吗？来这儿之前，在他看来，澳大利亚一定是个很遥远的地方，而在这儿的学习生活有没有改变他对澳大利亚的看法呢？
[b]莱恩：[/b]
我还记得他刚来上学的时候，他感到有些意外。有一天他对我说，妈妈，班上的同学上课时不礼貌。我问，怎么不礼貌啦？他说，他们没完没了地提问题，又讲话又争论，还评论老师上课的内容，竟然还能走出教室。于是我就尽力向他解释，他们就是这个样子，这是他们国家的文化。后来有一天老师告诉我，我儿子达喀的成绩不太好，特别是口语成绩，课上发言不积极。事实上达喀在课堂讨论时不太发言。我又只好尽力向老师解释，这就是我们的学习方式，我们学英语就习惯于问答式的教学，你知道，没人教我们批判地看问题，分析问题或是设身处地地想问题，等等这一些。达喀在这儿学习已经快三年了，耳濡目染间，他对澳大利亚的文化、习惯，尤其是对学校生活的看法发生了很大变化。现在我可以放心让他自己写文章了，因为他已经会评论了，而且也试着在班上发言了。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
这是来自印尼的埃尔莱恩阿瓦蒂，她获得了澳大利亚国际发展署颁发的奖学金，正在澳大利亚读书。
社会学家鲍勃·康奈尔曾在澳大利亚、美国、欧洲各大学任教，目前在悉尼大学讲授教育学。他希望澳大利亚更多地将教育视为一种“辅助手段”而非一种“商业行为”……
[b]鲍勃·康奈尔：[/b]
如果我们把教育定位成交易，那就偏离了文化交流这一主题。还是有很多人愿意慷慨援助发展中国家的，关键是我们能否建立有效的机制来实现人们的愿望。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
现在，教育是澳大利亚的第八大出口产业。
在有些大学，留学生所缴的学费已占学生缴费收入总额的一半以上。
一九八五年，澳大利亚的大学首次获得许可，可以自主决定留学生的收费标准。诸如西蒙·马金森教授这些专门从事教育研究的学者认为，大学经费日益依赖于留学生，而政府也减少了对高等教育的投入，这两种现象绝非巧合。
[b]西蒙·马金森：[/b]
政府最初先是缩减了教育投入，同时又取消了对留学生的收费限制。各大学得到政府的允许，走出国门招收海外学生，并且只需保证所收学费为完全商业性收费且不对留学生提供补助，就可自行制定收费标准。招收留学生的人数也没有限制。由于招收国内学生受到政府教育经费和院校负荷标准等限制，所以招生的人数有一定限额。但对海外学生的招生人数却没有限制。这就为各大学增加收入提供了一个小小的窗口，而他们逐步扩大了这个窗口，也因此获得了更多的收入。自从各大学扩大海外招生以来，留学生人数已经从一九九零年的大约一万二千人上升到目前的大约十万人，而留学生所缴纳的费用已经占了大学所收全部费用的十分之一，这种状况当然使政府能进一步削减教育经费。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
澳大利亚政府现在面临的一个关键问题就是在缩减教育投入若干年后，是恢复联邦预算中对大学的投入，还是进一步放松管制，让各大学不仅对海外学生而且对国内学生自行设定收费标准。
下面再来听听霍默·勒格朗教授的看法……
[b]霍默·勒格朗教授：[/b]
如果是在海外学生中很受欢迎的大学，就很有可能这么做。比如墨尔本大学，或者是莫纳什大学，或者是昆士兰州州立大学，这些学校的法律专业就能招收到很多的自费学生。当然，这样的结果可能是好的，也可能不好。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
鲍勃·康奈尔教授就认为这样做的结果是不好的。像鲍勃·康奈尔这样的教育研究人士指出，接受高等教育比例最高的前十个地区都集中在悉尼和墨尔本这两个澳大利亚最大城市的最富裕的郊区。
[b]鲍勃·康奈尔：[/b]
我们的研究发现，来自富裕家庭的孩子，当然包括来自富裕郊区的孩子，会有更多的机会进入大学；而在大学里，他们又会有更好的机会学习好的专业以在将来得到最体面且收入丰厚的工作。这种在受教育机会上阶级间的不平等现象根深蒂固，一直是困扰好几代澳大利亚人的最大的教育问题之一。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
不过在我的有生之年，而且在很多生育高峰期出生的这一辈人中，大家都能去念当地的高中，也肯定能够受到一定的教育；如果智力不错的话，还能有机会继续深造读大学。这种情况发生变化了吗？
[b]鲍勃·康奈尔：[/b]
没有，情况还一样。我认为我们仍然有相当不错的中等教育，而且不同社会背景的孩子也能够受到高等教育。有所改变的是在更高层次上的竞争，选学最好的大学专业时面临的竞争。在这种竞争中，一个人调动家庭和学校资源的能力变得十分重要。另外一个变化与私立学校有关，政府加大了对私立学校的资助力度，媒体也给与了更多支持，这就导致了对公立教育投入的逐步缩减。所以我认为，这些做法都毫无疑问地扩大了社会差距，尤其是教育体制内的阶级之间的差距。所以说，现有体制产生的不平等比从前更为严重。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
在澳大利亚大城市以外的辽阔乡村地区，是否能够负担得起到城市接受高等教育和取得入学资格一样，是一大难题。
比尔·贾布尔是维多利亚州高尔本河谷大谢伯顿市的市长。该地区位于维多利亚州首府墨尔本东北二百公里处，是一个集约型水果和农产品种植区。
[b]比尔·贾布尔：[/b]
噢，实在是很大的开支……我有两个女儿都决定不去墨尔本念书。我做了个比较，发现自己真是幸运，一个女儿决定留在这里，一个要到另一个地区中心去读书。比较一下这些费用和去墨尔本的费用吧，包括住宿、吃饭，还有各种各样需要在墨尔本支付的租金和购买东西的费用，供孩子们在二百公里外的墨尔本念书太难了，那实在是笔很大、很大的花销。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
是的。我想留学生也会有同感。他们要从更远的地方到这里学习。无论如何，情况都是一样的，都是在一个陌生环境中给自己安个家，对吧？
[b]比尔·贾布尔：[/b]
确实如此。在我们这儿，没有定时的公共交通设施。火车倒确实有，可是光单程就要两个半小时，你总不能为了上一门课每天都来回奔波吧。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
大谢伯顿市的乡村地方政府正牵头敦促联邦政府出资在那里兴建一个高等教育中心。他们希望看到中学毕业生能在那里学到日趋复杂的农产品出口业和食品加工厂所需的技能。
[b]比尔·贾布尔：[/b]
我们这里是个密集型农业和园艺业地区，一直以来，人们都不愁找不到工作。中学毕业后，马上就能在果园或农场找到工作，挤牛奶或者修剪果树。所以整个情况就是，只要你愿意，找到干力气活儿的工作是没问题的，但是脑力工作却没得到同样的发展。我们这里有好几家澳大利亚最大的食品加工厂，他们聘用各种类型的科学家、化学家、marketing人员、会计师，这些具有高等学历的人才正是企业发展壮大所需要的。所以，对体力劳动的需求正在减少，而对脑力劳动的需求逐渐增加。我们与其它地区不同的另外一点就是，我想，这里百分之四十二的人口都来自非英语国家，百分之十的人口是原住民。这两部分人都不愿意离开这个自己视作家园的地方。所以他们只愿意接受本地所能提供的高等教育，而不会到其他地方去。这样他们就错过了很多机会。事实上，他们也可能从来没有想过要接受高等教育。
[b]科林·伯克：[/b]
公平地说，直到现在，我觉得在大学里读书的原住民学生大多都属于我称之为“再读生’的情况。他们可能在读九年级、十年级或八年级时就早早离开学校，工作了大约五年或十年之后，意识到需要深造一下，于是就又到大学里来读书。他们这种情况在原住民学生中占的比例最大。
（插播音乐： 选自专辑《行星世界》中的《动感》）
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
评价澳大利亚原住民的教育状况，科林·伯克教授是最合适的人选。作为一位原住民教师和学术研究人员，他多次向联邦政府提交了关于如何提高澳大利亚原住民中学和大学教育成果的报告。
令伯克教授担忧的是，只有不到三分之一的澳大利亚原住民完成了中学学业，而非原住民人口完成中学学业的比例则占到总数的百分之七十六。并且，即使在那些确实接受大学教育的原住民学生中也没有几个来自偏远或丛林地区。
[b]科林·伯克：[/b]
你会发现大多数澳大利亚原住民大学生都来自大城市或离城市相当近的乡村地区。他们有较好的机会接受教育，完全没遇到什么障碍。而北部或更偏远地区的原住民却很少有教育机会，只是在有的情况下会给他们开设专门的课程。南澳州立大学就在彼特间德加若族（Pitjandjara）地区专门开设了现场师资培训课程，昆士兰州北部的詹姆斯·库克大学也开设了这样的课程，有一些这样的例子。但是，有些大学的校园离原住民居住区很远，却在没有社区支持的情况下要求学生到学校来学习，我觉得这种做法是注定要失败的，也没有得到多少响应，因为当地的原住民没有几个掌握了必要的技能和接受了足够的教育，从而能够按照澳大利亚南部各大学的要求以正常方式攻读大学学业。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
谢伯顿市提出的“学习中心”建议，对那里的原住民和少数民族群体来说应该是个非常好的消息。
科林·伯克的研究表明，对那些不用离开当地（通常是澳大利亚偏远的地区）就可以接受教育的原住民学生来说，他们的成功率超过百分之七十，相比之下，在城市大学校园的中接受教育而获得成功的原住民学生比例仅为百分之五十。
比尔·贾布尔的谢伯顿小组正同澳大利亚主要的远程教育机构“澳大利亚开放大学”合作。该机构的口号是‘教育来到你身边……’
[b]比尔·贾布尔：[/b]
我们有灵活方便的教室、视频链接设备和计算机中心以及所有诸如此类的东西，另外我们还想提供一些设备。这样学生们就能进入大学中心彼此结识与交流，感受到大学生活的氛围。所以我们会在某些情况下采用传统的教堂授课方式，然后再采用一些创新的方式，当然也会运用传统的远程教学模式。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
可以想象，你们也许会有一种反向吸引力，城里人可能会愿意在更轻松的乡村环境里学习吧？
[b]比尔·贾布尔：[/b]
嗯，是的，有些学生甚至会从墨尔本经高速公路赶来，在维多利亚州乡间的高尔本河之滨的乡村环境里住下来，这完全在我的意料之中。
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
比尔，那么留学生呢？
[b]比尔·贾布尔：[/b]
我们欢迎海外学生到这里来。我们大谢伯顿城的文化非常多元化，最近有许多中东人移居到这里，之前有过大批的意大利人、阿尔巴尼亚人和土耳其人。除了墨尔本大都市地区外，我们这里的原住民人口是最多的。所以，这是一个非常丰富多彩的多元文化社区，我们欢迎海外学子来学习。”
（插播音乐：选自专辑《世界节奏》中的《迪吉里杜管与古筝合奏曲》）
[b]苏·斯拉梅：[/b]
刚刚讲话的这位是比尔·贾布尔，他是维多利亚州大谢伯顿市的市长。
您正在收听的是澳大利亚广播电台的系列节目“今日澳洲”，我是苏·斯拉梅。下次节目“面向亚洲”将介绍我们的中学和大学如何努力让澳大利亚年轻人更加了解亚洲，我期待您的参与。
感谢赖安·厄甘提供的技术制作，感谢墨尔本莫纳什大学全国澳大利亚研究中心给予的学术指导。
[/quote]
2006-8-7 03:46
城市童话
英文详细内容
[quote]
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Hello, I'm Sue Slamen and welcome to Radio Australia's series - AUSTRALIA NOW.
(Music: School's Out by Alice Cooper)
In today's program, the internationalisation of Australian education.
The last twenty years has seen a very large increase in the number of Australians aged 20 to 30 go on to higher education.
And the same period of course has seen a very large rise in the number of international students coming down to Australia to do university courses. Overseas students now make up over eighteen per cent of total enrolments in Australian universities.
And that contrasts with the United States, for example, where only three per cent of university students come from outside the U.S.
I asked Simon Marginson, an Education Professor from Melbourne's Monash University if this is what's meant by 'the internationalisation of Australian education'?
[b]SIMON MARGINSON:[/b] "Well it can mean a number of things, it can mean simply increasing the non-Australian content of educational programs, for example having more examples taken from other countries or having more teaching personnel or even students in the classroom who are from other countries. It can simply be just that process of opening up to other cultural influences. But people also use it in more directed ways, and sometimes it's used to mean creating greater international understanding, reaching out, cultural exchange and education, bringing the parts of the world closer together, that kind of idea as a sort of a positive mission that universities and schools should undertake. And it can also be used in a very specific sense to refer to recruiting more foreign students for Australian universities. I mean when you hear a vice chancellor saying we need to increase the rate of internationalisation, what he's saying is we need to recruit more foreign students who pay full fees so we can have more money in the till."
[b]DENNIS:[/b] "You still get stuff like … oh he's stealing our jobs and stuff like that, you know it feels kind of odd because I'm like a commerce student learning here, so hey it's good that we're here, working, giving your country money and all that, so after a while you get to know most people and they're pretty nice."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] In the last few years fee-paying overseas students, like Dennis from Malaysia, have contributed over a billion dollars a year in direct income to Australian universities.
But aside from cold hard cash, 'internationalisation' is also understood as 'cross-cultural skilling' young Australians who also benefit from being exposed to international students from a diverse range of cultures.
Professor Homer Le Grand has taught in Australian universities since moving from the U.S 28 years ago. He heads up the Faculty of Arts at Monash; a campus that boasts one of the highest enrolments of overseas students in Australia.
[b]PROFESSOR HOMER LE GRAND:[/b] "It's certainly the case that it will never be possible for every Australian student to have an international education experience. But by having significant numbers of international students on campus they can get at least a I think a very useful and important exposure to different ways of thinking, different cultures, different backgrounds, and so the international students enrich the Australian system in a number of ways, not just financially."
(Music: Motionary from the album Planet World)
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Cross cultural communication is one of the real advantages of internationalising education as Prue Horne discovered when she took part in the Japan Exchange and Teaching program - known as J.E.T.
And after three years in Japan - how does Prue understand 'internationalisation'?
[b]PRUE HORNE:[/b] "I still think internationalisation is a very difficult concept to define, but from my experience, from my three years in Japan and travelling around the region I think the biggest thing that I have brought away from my experience is that I am far more aware of other cultures and traditions and customs and just the differences and how important the differences are and how important it is to respect them."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Prue Horne is one of four hundred young Australians who each year take part in the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program or JET. JET was established in 1987 by the Japanese Government to help Japanese communities become more open-minded by exposing them to more foreigners.
For Prue, the experience of being 'a foreigner abroad' has helped her understand the needs of overseas students who come into the STUDENT TRAVEL office where she works at the University of Tasmania in Australia's Southern island-state.
[b]PRUE HORNE:[/b] "I have a far greater deal of cultural sensitivity, I'm more likely to recognise or try to recognise where someone is from, what language they speak and therefore which cultural influences might be affecting their time in Australia or how they're behaving or what they really mean when they say something. I can appreciate the feelings of panic and terror and isolation and not being able to read signs and being reduced to the level of a child again, even though in your own country and your own language are very fluent and you're very articulate and you're very assertive and you can look after yourself. But I would say that the big difference between being in Australia and being in Japan is that they are very, very complimentary about foreigners who can speak even a few words of Japanese, and they're very forgiving of any mistakes or if you don't use the right form of politeness or you don't quite get it right, because just having the basic Japanese and showing that you're willing to try and showing that you've made an effort is more to them than actually getting it right. And I think that we can learn a lot from that in Australia."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] So how do young Japanese who come to Australia to study adjust to living in a foreign place?
[b]JAPANESE STUDENT:[/b] "My name is Fusaka, I'm from Japan, I've been here for three years, and it was very hard to make Australian friends because my English wasn't good. But it's OK now, yeah, just don't be scared to make any mistakes in second language and go out a lot and meet lots of people and get experienced."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] The more that international students mix with the different cultures that make up contemporary Australia, the easier their adjustment.
This is how a Malaysian student describes her experience as an 'international student' at the University of Melbourne.
[b]MALAYSIAN STUDENT:[/b] "I think it was mainly adjustment problems to the climate, the weather, the culture and the workload and adjusting to a new system of teaching. It's all the minor things that add up, like the accent, which was different, the way of teaching, the language problems and at the same time you had to get used to new environment, making new friends, which poses a lot of stress. Now I can actually say that I'm quite adapted to this place that I'm really enjoying myself here for the fact that it's a very multicultural place, it's a very cosmopolitan city, and that's really what I was seeking when I first came here. And I guess that's why a lot of international students are looking at staying back after graduation and working, because you just get so used to the life here, to the people, the friends that you have, the culture. I love the fact that it's a very open society; it's rather non-judgemental in comparison to the place that I come from. So the expectations are really not as great and it doesn't feel that pressurising, so you can just do whatever you want and no one's going to look at you and say that you're odd, because you can just be odd and you're part of the society and that's the best thing… yeah."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] And some advice to prospective international students from Bernard and Nathaniel who are from Hong Kong.
[b]BERNARD:[/b] "Australia is a good place for them to study of course but it's really they have to learn a lot how to take care of themselves and if they're not mature enough and I think they have to be very careful when they're looking for friends because here you actually rely on friends a lot. And also of course when you need help don't hesitate to go and find, go to uni office to find someone to help you, and I think they're really friendly."
NATHANIEL "Yeah much the same, you have to be more initiated when you study because no one is going to help you, you have to ask for help yourself yeah."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] The majority of Australia's international students come from Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia. I asked the Dean of Monash University's Arts Faculty, Homer Le Grand, what the universities do to help overseas students adjust to living and studying in Australia…
[b]PROFESSOR HOMER LE GRAND:[/b] "I can't speak for other universities, I think Monash does a reasonably good job in terms of provision of services, that includes pre-departure briefings for international students to give them some sense of what they're going to find when they arrive and what it's going to be like the first few weeks. Orientation sessions, besides that all universities I would hope, but certainly the ones with which I'm familiar do provide specialist staff in language and learning, English as a second language skills and the important aspects of cultural differences. I think that's something that is pretty well ingrained if you like into the knowledge system and the teaching approach of academic staff and the Faculty of Arts. For example students from the Southeast Asian or the north Asian regions, not just those exclusively but those who are less experienced shall we say in trying to sort through a diverse interpretations of say a particular historical event, or competing frameworks in my own field for the analysis of scientific change. They're used to getting the answers, learning the answers and then repeating the answers, I mean that's a bit cruel and it's an over-simplification, a huge over-simplification, but that is something which we do have to deal in our own teaching."
[b]LEN:[/b] "When I was at College, I majored in English so that's why I'm here so we have more exposure to language.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Erlenawati or 'Len' to her Aussie friends is from Eastern Indonesia where she successfully applied for an Australian government scholarship.
"Now Len you were mentioning you have a son studying here in Australia while you're at Monash University. Could you talk a little bit about his experience coming here and studying alongside Australians at a local school? Has that changed his image of a country that obviously seemed a long way away when he was back home at school in Indonesia?
[b]LEN:[/b] Yeah I remember the first time he came here at school he was kind of surprised, he told me one day Mum, my friends in the classroom they're not polite. Why? I said. They keep on asking questions, they talk, they argue, they criticise, they just can walk out and then I'm trying to explain it to him that that's the way they are, that's the culture here that resides in this country. And then one day the teacher told me that Daka his mark is quite low, particularly in speaking, his contribution to the classroom. He didn't really contribute a lot in the classroom. And then again I tried to explain to the teacher that's the way we are taught, in studying English we are used to sort of question and answer basis you know, we are not taught how to think critically, how to analyse, how to put ourselves in someone else's shoes or something like that. So he has been here for almost three years and it seems that he's changed in the way he perceives about Australia and particularly about stuff at school. So now I can just leave him alone with the writing of the essay, because he knows how to criticise and he's sort of trying to open his mouth in the classroom now."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Erlenawati who's in Australia from Indonesia on an AusAID scholarship.
Sociologist Bob Connell has taught in universities throughout Australia, the US and Europe and is currently Professor of Education at the University of Sydney. He'd like to see Australia putting more emphasis on education as aid than education as trade…
[b]BOB CONNELL:[/b] "If we've set it up as a commercial transaction we're not basically centering it on communication between cultures, and there are certainly many people open to a more generous approach to the developing world if we can find the institutional ways for those attitudes to be expressed."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Education is now Australia's eighth largest export industry.
And on some campuses fees from international students provide more than half the student revenue.
Universities were allowed to set market fees for international students in 1985 and leading educational researchers like Professor Simon Marginson don't believe it's a coincidence that universities have become more reliant on income from overseas students as government funding of higher education has declined.
[b]SIMON MARGINSON:[/b] "The original squeeze on funding coincided with the deregulation of fees for international students. Universities were told you know you're now welcome to go out and recruit these international students, you can charge whatever fee level you like providing you're charging fully commercial rates and not subsidising them. And you can recruit as many as you like, no limit, so although the number of domestic students was limited because that was subject to government funding and load targets and so on, the number of foreign students was open-ended, so the universities had this little window whereby they could increase their revenue and they rapidly increased the size of the window and increased their revenue thereby. Now once the universities did that and they moved from earning money from only about 12-thousand students in 1990 to about 100-thousand students now, and to a situation where they now get about one dollar in every 10 from international students, of course that allowed governments to cut public funding further, of course."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] A key question facing the Australian Government is whether to restore federal budgetary spending to universities after a number of years of funding cuts or to further de-regulate so that universities would be free to set fees for both international AND Australian students.
Professor Homer Le Grand again …
[b]PROFESSOR HOMER LE GRAND:[/b] "If they're in great demand from students yes, they can probably do that successfully. So that for example Law would be able to take in even more fee paying students at the University of Melbourne or perhaps at Monash or Queensland, that of course might or might not be of desirable outcome."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] This would be a highly undesirable outcome argues Professor Bob Connell. Education researchers like Bob Connell point to the fact that the areas with the top ten higher education participation rates are to be found in the wealthiest suburbs of Australia's biggest cities: Sydney and Melbourne.
[b]BOB CONNELL:[/b] "We have research showing that kids coming from privileged backgrounds, including of course from privileged suburbs have much better access to university and within university better access to the most prestigious and best paying professional careers. That is a deeply embedded pattern of class inequalities in educational access that's been one of the biggest problems about Australian education for generations past.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Nevertheless it certainly would seem in the span of my lifetime and many of the baby boomers that you could attend your local high school and be sure that you'd get a reasonable education, and if you were bright enough a chance at going on to university. Has that changed?
[b]BOB CONNELL:[/b] No I think that's still the case that we have a fairly good basic provision of secondary education and there are some kids from all social backgrounds who can go through it to higher education. What's changed is higher levels of competition for access to the most desirable university courses and in that competition your ability to mobilise family and school resources becomes important, and what's also changed is the increasing amount of government funding and media support for private schools, which has led to a gradual squeeze on public education. And that's increased I think without any doubt the levels of social division, particularly class division in the education system, so there's now more inequality being produced by the system than was the case before."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] In Australia's vast hinterlands outside of the metropolitan areas being able to afford to move to the cities to pursue higher education is often as big a hurdle as gaining entry in the first place.
Bill Jaboor is the C.E.O of the city of greater Shepparton, in the Goulbourn Valley - an area of intense fruit growing and agriculture, 200 kilometres north-east of Victoria's state capital, Melbourne.
[b]BILL JABOOR:[/b] "Oh a huge imposte… I've got two daughters who have opted not to go and I've done the comparison, I've been lucky in that one's chosen to stay here and one's chosen to go to another regional centre. But to compare the costs of that with the costs of having to provide accommodation, meals, all the sorts of services that you need to rent and buy in Melbourne makes it a very, very costly exercise, very difficult for the families to be able to maintain their children as students 200 kilometres away in Melbourne.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Yes I think people from overseas could empathise with that, they travel of course even bigger distances to often come down here and study. But it's the same kind of situation, having to set up house in a foreign place essentially isn't it?
[b]BILL JABOOR:[/b] Well that's it, and in our situation there is no public transport on a regular basis, there's a train service, two-and-a-half-hour train trip but you just can't do that there and back in a day and attend a university course."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] The rural municipality of Greater Shepparton is spearheading a push for the Federal government to fund a centre of higher education. They want to see school-leavers get the sort of skills increasingly required by more sophisticated rural export industries and food processing plants.
[b]BILL JABOOR:[/b] "Because we are an area of intense agriculture and horticulture people have been able to get jobs, leave school, get a job straightaway on an orchard, on a farm, working a dairy, pruning fruit trees. So there's this issue of we've been able to provide the brawn if you like, but we haven't been developing the brain side of the equation. And we have several of Australia's largest food processors operating in this region, and they employ all sorts of scientists, chemists, marketers, accountants, people with tertiary qualifications that need to grow their business. So there's going to be less of the brawn and more of the brain required. The other issues that make us a little bit different I guess are 42 per cent of our population originate from non-English speaking backgrounds, and ten per cent of our population are Aboriginal people. And both of those groups seem to be reluctant to leave the area that they know as home. So what happens is they choose not to pursue their tertiary education any further than what's provided here, so they miss out, in fact it probably doesn't even appear on their radar screen as an option."
[b]COLIN BOURKE:[/b] "Even today - I think it's fair to say that most indigenous students at Australian universities are what I'd call second-chance students. They left school early, maybe Year 9, Year 10, Year 8, and they have gone and worked for maybe five years or ten years and then realised they need an education and then they come back to university. That's the biggest percentage of indigenous students within the system."
(Music: Motionary from the album Planet World)
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Professor Colin Bourke is well placed to comment on the education of Australian Aborigines. An Aboriginal teacher and academic researcher, he's provided the Federal government with reports on how to improve school and university outcomes for indigenous Australians.
Professor Bourke is concerned that less than a third of indigenous Australians successfully complete secondary school, and that contrasts to seventy-six per cent of the non-indigenous population. And few of those indigenous students who do make it to university are from remote or bush communities.
[b]COLIN BOURKE:[/b] "Most of the indigenous university students in Australia you'll find are from metropolitan and reasonably close rural areas to the cities. They've had better opportunities to get an education and they don't have all the hassles, but very few of the people from the North and the more remote areas get to university, except in those cases where there are specific courses developed for them. The University of South Australia has specific course for training of teachers in the Pitjandjara lands, which is on site and the same at James Cook University in northern Queensland, and there are a few things like that. But where universities demand that the students come on campus remote from their communities without the community support, I think that that's designed for failure and it's also very rarely taken up. And very few of those people up there have the skills, the educational background to actually take on a university course in the normal mode as demanded by universities in the South of Australia."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Shepparton's proposed 'learning hub' should be particularly good news for that region's Aboriginal and ethnic communities.
Colin Bourke's research indicates that those indigenous students who don't have to leave their local communities - often found in the more remote parts of Australia - to go down to the cities for study, they had a success rate of over 70 per cent compared to just 50 per cent for those indigenous students who had to make the move to a city campus.
Bill Jaboor's Shepparton team are working with Open Learning Australia, a leading provider of distance education whose motto is 'Education that comes to You' …
[b]BILL JABOOR:[/b] "There'll be flexible rooms, there'll be video links, there'll be a computer centre, all those things, but we also want to provide some facilities. So the students can come into the university centre and meet each other and socialise and get a flavour of that university life. So we'll get the traditional chalk and talk method being provided in some instances, and then some of the new innovative methods, and of course the traditional distance education models as well.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] I can imagine that you might attract some exodus the other way, city people perhaps wanting to study in a more relaxed rural environment?
[b]BILL JABOOR:[/b] Well yeah, look it's not beyond the realms of my thinking that students will even travel up the highway from Melbourne and come and live in a relaxed rural environment in regional Victoria adjacent to the Goulbourn River.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Well what about the overseas students Bill?
[b]BILL JABOOR:[/b] We'd love to welcome some overseas students. We have a very, very multicultural society here in Greater Shepparton and we've had a lot of people from the Middle East come and settle up here more recently, but before that there were large influx of Italian people and Albanian people, Turkish people and we have the largest Aboriginal population outside metropolitan Melbourne. So it is a very diverse and multicultural community and we'd welcome overseas students."
(Music: Didgeridoo Plus Koto from the album World in Rhythm)
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Bill Jaboor, and Bill is the Chief Executive Officer of the City of Greater Shepparton in regional Victoria.
You've been listening to Radio Australia's series, Australia Now and I hope you can join me - Sue Slamen for our next program: 'COMING TO TERMS WITH ASIA' - how our schools and universities have been working to make young Australians more Asia-literate.
My thanks to Ryan Egan for technical production and to the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University for academic advice.
[/quote]
[quote]
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Hello, I'm Sue Slamen and welcome to Radio Australia's series - AUSTRALIA NOW.
(Music: School's Out by Alice Cooper)
In today's program, the internationalisation of Australian education.
The last twenty years has seen a very large increase in the number of Australians aged 20 to 30 go on to higher education.
And the same period of course has seen a very large rise in the number of international students coming down to Australia to do university courses. Overseas students now make up over eighteen per cent of total enrolments in Australian universities.
And that contrasts with the United States, for example, where only three per cent of university students come from outside the U.S.
I asked Simon Marginson, an Education Professor from Melbourne's Monash University if this is what's meant by 'the internationalisation of Australian education'?
[b]SIMON MARGINSON:[/b] "Well it can mean a number of things, it can mean simply increasing the non-Australian content of educational programs, for example having more examples taken from other countries or having more teaching personnel or even students in the classroom who are from other countries. It can simply be just that process of opening up to other cultural influences. But people also use it in more directed ways, and sometimes it's used to mean creating greater international understanding, reaching out, cultural exchange and education, bringing the parts of the world closer together, that kind of idea as a sort of a positive mission that universities and schools should undertake. And it can also be used in a very specific sense to refer to recruiting more foreign students for Australian universities. I mean when you hear a vice chancellor saying we need to increase the rate of internationalisation, what he's saying is we need to recruit more foreign students who pay full fees so we can have more money in the till."
[b]DENNIS:[/b] "You still get stuff like … oh he's stealing our jobs and stuff like that, you know it feels kind of odd because I'm like a commerce student learning here, so hey it's good that we're here, working, giving your country money and all that, so after a while you get to know most people and they're pretty nice."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] In the last few years fee-paying overseas students, like Dennis from Malaysia, have contributed over a billion dollars a year in direct income to Australian universities.
But aside from cold hard cash, 'internationalisation' is also understood as 'cross-cultural skilling' young Australians who also benefit from being exposed to international students from a diverse range of cultures.
Professor Homer Le Grand has taught in Australian universities since moving from the U.S 28 years ago. He heads up the Faculty of Arts at Monash; a campus that boasts one of the highest enrolments of overseas students in Australia.
[b]PROFESSOR HOMER LE GRAND:[/b] "It's certainly the case that it will never be possible for every Australian student to have an international education experience. But by having significant numbers of international students on campus they can get at least a I think a very useful and important exposure to different ways of thinking, different cultures, different backgrounds, and so the international students enrich the Australian system in a number of ways, not just financially."
(Music: Motionary from the album Planet World)
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Cross cultural communication is one of the real advantages of internationalising education as Prue Horne discovered when she took part in the Japan Exchange and Teaching program - known as J.E.T.
And after three years in Japan - how does Prue understand 'internationalisation'?
[b]PRUE HORNE:[/b] "I still think internationalisation is a very difficult concept to define, but from my experience, from my three years in Japan and travelling around the region I think the biggest thing that I have brought away from my experience is that I am far more aware of other cultures and traditions and customs and just the differences and how important the differences are and how important it is to respect them."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Prue Horne is one of four hundred young Australians who each year take part in the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program or JET. JET was established in 1987 by the Japanese Government to help Japanese communities become more open-minded by exposing them to more foreigners.
For Prue, the experience of being 'a foreigner abroad' has helped her understand the needs of overseas students who come into the STUDENT TRAVEL office where she works at the University of Tasmania in Australia's Southern island-state.
[b]PRUE HORNE:[/b] "I have a far greater deal of cultural sensitivity, I'm more likely to recognise or try to recognise where someone is from, what language they speak and therefore which cultural influences might be affecting their time in Australia or how they're behaving or what they really mean when they say something. I can appreciate the feelings of panic and terror and isolation and not being able to read signs and being reduced to the level of a child again, even though in your own country and your own language are very fluent and you're very articulate and you're very assertive and you can look after yourself. But I would say that the big difference between being in Australia and being in Japan is that they are very, very complimentary about foreigners who can speak even a few words of Japanese, and they're very forgiving of any mistakes or if you don't use the right form of politeness or you don't quite get it right, because just having the basic Japanese and showing that you're willing to try and showing that you've made an effort is more to them than actually getting it right. And I think that we can learn a lot from that in Australia."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] So how do young Japanese who come to Australia to study adjust to living in a foreign place?
[b]JAPANESE STUDENT:[/b] "My name is Fusaka, I'm from Japan, I've been here for three years, and it was very hard to make Australian friends because my English wasn't good. But it's OK now, yeah, just don't be scared to make any mistakes in second language and go out a lot and meet lots of people and get experienced."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] The more that international students mix with the different cultures that make up contemporary Australia, the easier their adjustment.
This is how a Malaysian student describes her experience as an 'international student' at the University of Melbourne.
[b]MALAYSIAN STUDENT:[/b] "I think it was mainly adjustment problems to the climate, the weather, the culture and the workload and adjusting to a new system of teaching. It's all the minor things that add up, like the accent, which was different, the way of teaching, the language problems and at the same time you had to get used to new environment, making new friends, which poses a lot of stress. Now I can actually say that I'm quite adapted to this place that I'm really enjoying myself here for the fact that it's a very multicultural place, it's a very cosmopolitan city, and that's really what I was seeking when I first came here. And I guess that's why a lot of international students are looking at staying back after graduation and working, because you just get so used to the life here, to the people, the friends that you have, the culture. I love the fact that it's a very open society; it's rather non-judgemental in comparison to the place that I come from. So the expectations are really not as great and it doesn't feel that pressurising, so you can just do whatever you want and no one's going to look at you and say that you're odd, because you can just be odd and you're part of the society and that's the best thing… yeah."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] And some advice to prospective international students from Bernard and Nathaniel who are from Hong Kong.
[b]BERNARD:[/b] "Australia is a good place for them to study of course but it's really they have to learn a lot how to take care of themselves and if they're not mature enough and I think they have to be very careful when they're looking for friends because here you actually rely on friends a lot. And also of course when you need help don't hesitate to go and find, go to uni office to find someone to help you, and I think they're really friendly."
NATHANIEL "Yeah much the same, you have to be more initiated when you study because no one is going to help you, you have to ask for help yourself yeah."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] The majority of Australia's international students come from Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Indonesia. I asked the Dean of Monash University's Arts Faculty, Homer Le Grand, what the universities do to help overseas students adjust to living and studying in Australia…
[b]PROFESSOR HOMER LE GRAND:[/b] "I can't speak for other universities, I think Monash does a reasonably good job in terms of provision of services, that includes pre-departure briefings for international students to give them some sense of what they're going to find when they arrive and what it's going to be like the first few weeks. Orientation sessions, besides that all universities I would hope, but certainly the ones with which I'm familiar do provide specialist staff in language and learning, English as a second language skills and the important aspects of cultural differences. I think that's something that is pretty well ingrained if you like into the knowledge system and the teaching approach of academic staff and the Faculty of Arts. For example students from the Southeast Asian or the north Asian regions, not just those exclusively but those who are less experienced shall we say in trying to sort through a diverse interpretations of say a particular historical event, or competing frameworks in my own field for the analysis of scientific change. They're used to getting the answers, learning the answers and then repeating the answers, I mean that's a bit cruel and it's an over-simplification, a huge over-simplification, but that is something which we do have to deal in our own teaching."
[b]LEN:[/b] "When I was at College, I majored in English so that's why I'm here so we have more exposure to language.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Erlenawati or 'Len' to her Aussie friends is from Eastern Indonesia where she successfully applied for an Australian government scholarship.
"Now Len you were mentioning you have a son studying here in Australia while you're at Monash University. Could you talk a little bit about his experience coming here and studying alongside Australians at a local school? Has that changed his image of a country that obviously seemed a long way away when he was back home at school in Indonesia?
[b]LEN:[/b] Yeah I remember the first time he came here at school he was kind of surprised, he told me one day Mum, my friends in the classroom they're not polite. Why? I said. They keep on asking questions, they talk, they argue, they criticise, they just can walk out and then I'm trying to explain it to him that that's the way they are, that's the culture here that resides in this country. And then one day the teacher told me that Daka his mark is quite low, particularly in speaking, his contribution to the classroom. He didn't really contribute a lot in the classroom. And then again I tried to explain to the teacher that's the way we are taught, in studying English we are used to sort of question and answer basis you know, we are not taught how to think critically, how to analyse, how to put ourselves in someone else's shoes or something like that. So he has been here for almost three years and it seems that he's changed in the way he perceives about Australia and particularly about stuff at school. So now I can just leave him alone with the writing of the essay, because he knows how to criticise and he's sort of trying to open his mouth in the classroom now."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Erlenawati who's in Australia from Indonesia on an AusAID scholarship.
Sociologist Bob Connell has taught in universities throughout Australia, the US and Europe and is currently Professor of Education at the University of Sydney. He'd like to see Australia putting more emphasis on education as aid than education as trade…
[b]BOB CONNELL:[/b] "If we've set it up as a commercial transaction we're not basically centering it on communication between cultures, and there are certainly many people open to a more generous approach to the developing world if we can find the institutional ways for those attitudes to be expressed."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Education is now Australia's eighth largest export industry.
And on some campuses fees from international students provide more than half the student revenue.
Universities were allowed to set market fees for international students in 1985 and leading educational researchers like Professor Simon Marginson don't believe it's a coincidence that universities have become more reliant on income from overseas students as government funding of higher education has declined.
[b]SIMON MARGINSON:[/b] "The original squeeze on funding coincided with the deregulation of fees for international students. Universities were told you know you're now welcome to go out and recruit these international students, you can charge whatever fee level you like providing you're charging fully commercial rates and not subsidising them. And you can recruit as many as you like, no limit, so although the number of domestic students was limited because that was subject to government funding and load targets and so on, the number of foreign students was open-ended, so the universities had this little window whereby they could increase their revenue and they rapidly increased the size of the window and increased their revenue thereby. Now once the universities did that and they moved from earning money from only about 12-thousand students in 1990 to about 100-thousand students now, and to a situation where they now get about one dollar in every 10 from international students, of course that allowed governments to cut public funding further, of course."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] A key question facing the Australian Government is whether to restore federal budgetary spending to universities after a number of years of funding cuts or to further de-regulate so that universities would be free to set fees for both international AND Australian students.
Professor Homer Le Grand again …
[b]PROFESSOR HOMER LE GRAND:[/b] "If they're in great demand from students yes, they can probably do that successfully. So that for example Law would be able to take in even more fee paying students at the University of Melbourne or perhaps at Monash or Queensland, that of course might or might not be of desirable outcome."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] This would be a highly undesirable outcome argues Professor Bob Connell. Education researchers like Bob Connell point to the fact that the areas with the top ten higher education participation rates are to be found in the wealthiest suburbs of Australia's biggest cities: Sydney and Melbourne.
[b]BOB CONNELL:[/b] "We have research showing that kids coming from privileged backgrounds, including of course from privileged suburbs have much better access to university and within university better access to the most prestigious and best paying professional careers. That is a deeply embedded pattern of class inequalities in educational access that's been one of the biggest problems about Australian education for generations past.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Nevertheless it certainly would seem in the span of my lifetime and many of the baby boomers that you could attend your local high school and be sure that you'd get a reasonable education, and if you were bright enough a chance at going on to university. Has that changed?
[b]BOB CONNELL:[/b] No I think that's still the case that we have a fairly good basic provision of secondary education and there are some kids from all social backgrounds who can go through it to higher education. What's changed is higher levels of competition for access to the most desirable university courses and in that competition your ability to mobilise family and school resources becomes important, and what's also changed is the increasing amount of government funding and media support for private schools, which has led to a gradual squeeze on public education. And that's increased I think without any doubt the levels of social division, particularly class division in the education system, so there's now more inequality being produced by the system than was the case before."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] In Australia's vast hinterlands outside of the metropolitan areas being able to afford to move to the cities to pursue higher education is often as big a hurdle as gaining entry in the first place.
Bill Jaboor is the C.E.O of the city of greater Shepparton, in the Goulbourn Valley - an area of intense fruit growing and agriculture, 200 kilometres north-east of Victoria's state capital, Melbourne.
[b]BILL JABOOR:[/b] "Oh a huge imposte… I've got two daughters who have opted not to go and I've done the comparison, I've been lucky in that one's chosen to stay here and one's chosen to go to another regional centre. But to compare the costs of that with the costs of having to provide accommodation, meals, all the sorts of services that you need to rent and buy in Melbourne makes it a very, very costly exercise, very difficult for the families to be able to maintain their children as students 200 kilometres away in Melbourne.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Yes I think people from overseas could empathise with that, they travel of course even bigger distances to often come down here and study. But it's the same kind of situation, having to set up house in a foreign place essentially isn't it?
[b]BILL JABOOR:[/b] Well that's it, and in our situation there is no public transport on a regular basis, there's a train service, two-and-a-half-hour train trip but you just can't do that there and back in a day and attend a university course."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] The rural municipality of Greater Shepparton is spearheading a push for the Federal government to fund a centre of higher education. They want to see school-leavers get the sort of skills increasingly required by more sophisticated rural export industries and food processing plants.
[b]BILL JABOOR:[/b] "Because we are an area of intense agriculture and horticulture people have been able to get jobs, leave school, get a job straightaway on an orchard, on a farm, working a dairy, pruning fruit trees. So there's this issue of we've been able to provide the brawn if you like, but we haven't been developing the brain side of the equation. And we have several of Australia's largest food processors operating in this region, and they employ all sorts of scientists, chemists, marketers, accountants, people with tertiary qualifications that need to grow their business. So there's going to be less of the brawn and more of the brain required. The other issues that make us a little bit different I guess are 42 per cent of our population originate from non-English speaking backgrounds, and ten per cent of our population are Aboriginal people. And both of those groups seem to be reluctant to leave the area that they know as home. So what happens is they choose not to pursue their tertiary education any further than what's provided here, so they miss out, in fact it probably doesn't even appear on their radar screen as an option."
[b]COLIN BOURKE:[/b] "Even today - I think it's fair to say that most indigenous students at Australian universities are what I'd call second-chance students. They left school early, maybe Year 9, Year 10, Year 8, and they have gone and worked for maybe five years or ten years and then realised they need an education and then they come back to university. That's the biggest percentage of indigenous students within the system."
(Music: Motionary from the album Planet World)
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Professor Colin Bourke is well placed to comment on the education of Australian Aborigines. An Aboriginal teacher and academic researcher, he's provided the Federal government with reports on how to improve school and university outcomes for indigenous Australians.
Professor Bourke is concerned that less than a third of indigenous Australians successfully complete secondary school, and that contrasts to seventy-six per cent of the non-indigenous population. And few of those indigenous students who do make it to university are from remote or bush communities.
[b]COLIN BOURKE:[/b] "Most of the indigenous university students in Australia you'll find are from metropolitan and reasonably close rural areas to the cities. They've had better opportunities to get an education and they don't have all the hassles, but very few of the people from the North and the more remote areas get to university, except in those cases where there are specific courses developed for them. The University of South Australia has specific course for training of teachers in the Pitjandjara lands, which is on site and the same at James Cook University in northern Queensland, and there are a few things like that. But where universities demand that the students come on campus remote from their communities without the community support, I think that that's designed for failure and it's also very rarely taken up. And very few of those people up there have the skills, the educational background to actually take on a university course in the normal mode as demanded by universities in the South of Australia."
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Shepparton's proposed 'learning hub' should be particularly good news for that region's Aboriginal and ethnic communities.
Colin Bourke's research indicates that those indigenous students who don't have to leave their local communities - often found in the more remote parts of Australia - to go down to the cities for study, they had a success rate of over 70 per cent compared to just 50 per cent for those indigenous students who had to make the move to a city campus.
Bill Jaboor's Shepparton team are working with Open Learning Australia, a leading provider of distance education whose motto is 'Education that comes to You' …
[b]BILL JABOOR:[/b] "There'll be flexible rooms, there'll be video links, there'll be a computer centre, all those things, but we also want to provide some facilities. So the students can come into the university centre and meet each other and socialise and get a flavour of that university life. So we'll get the traditional chalk and talk method being provided in some instances, and then some of the new innovative methods, and of course the traditional distance education models as well.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] I can imagine that you might attract some exodus the other way, city people perhaps wanting to study in a more relaxed rural environment?
[b]BILL JABOOR:[/b] Well yeah, look it's not beyond the realms of my thinking that students will even travel up the highway from Melbourne and come and live in a relaxed rural environment in regional Victoria adjacent to the Goulbourn River.
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Well what about the overseas students Bill?
[b]BILL JABOOR:[/b] We'd love to welcome some overseas students. We have a very, very multicultural society here in Greater Shepparton and we've had a lot of people from the Middle East come and settle up here more recently, but before that there were large influx of Italian people and Albanian people, Turkish people and we have the largest Aboriginal population outside metropolitan Melbourne. So it is a very diverse and multicultural community and we'd welcome overseas students."
(Music: Didgeridoo Plus Koto from the album World in Rhythm)
[b]SUE SLAMEN:[/b] Bill Jaboor, and Bill is the Chief Executive Officer of the City of Greater Shepparton in regional Victoria.
You've been listening to Radio Australia's series, Australia Now and I hope you can join me - Sue Slamen for our next program: 'COMING TO TERMS WITH ASIA' - how our schools and universities have been working to make young Australians more Asia-literate.
My thanks to Ryan Egan for technical production and to the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University for academic advice.
[/quote]
2006-8-7 03:46
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2007-7-15 01:21
chrisfong
从事的工作、生活的家园和休闲方式；为您解读他们赖以生存的环境、管理国家的政治体制以及他们是如何待人处事以及在本地区发展睦邻友好关系的。
转载请注明出自澳洲中文网,本贴地址：[url]http://www.ozchinese.com/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=50404[/url]
转载请注明出自澳洲中文网,本贴地址：[url]http://www.ozchinese.com/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=50404[/url]
2007-7-19 17:58
ycfder
5
了
了
2007-7-19 22:38
tyg1984711
支持
2007-8-21 20:55
thinkworm
ds
sd
sd
2007-9-8 16:04
babypigsxm
UP
2007-9-12 16:45
bonnie7211
thx
2007-9-22 12:49
icebear
要下在完需要时间！
2007-12-1 19:44
celinna
ta
ta
ta
2008-1-14 20:12
zararlin
thank you
2008-3-7 15:39
ID不换
:hahaha:
2008-5-29 09:08
xiaomantong
怎样下载到电脑啊？
2008-5-29 09:30
xiaomantong
赞
2008-6-4 07:02
bettyyu
回复 #3 城市童话 的帖子
:monkey19
:monkey19
2008-6-11 13:51
jobsaus
65y
2008-7-15 22:28
meatball
ｔｈａｎｋｓ
2008-7-17 09:53
trieuh
回复
2008-7-27 22:23
liyantao
good
2008-8-1 13:13
faya
thnx sooooooooooooooo much!!!!!!!
2008-8-23 21:47
lena88
大
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