The development of a foreign student policy in New Zealand

Abstract

After World War Two, between the early fifties and the late sixties, the foreign student issue began as an aid policy for the developing countries. Education aid was a tool for the western powers to build up human resources, political influence and trade relationship with the developing nations. In the seventies, the economic downturn of the western powers, and the huge inflow of foreign students from the developing countries raised the concern of education subsidisation of developing nations. Depending on the economic strength of the host countries, restrictions on the mobility of foreign students were developed either by quotas or differential fees by most of the western host nations of private foreign students from developing nations. These restrictions proved to be inadequate to control the huge inflow of private foreign students. Britain and Australia adopted a full fee recovery policy to solve the problem in 1979 and 1990 respectively. New Zealand Government followed their examples and announced the latest private foreign student policy on 27 December 1988. The guiding ideological interpretation was based on the market liberal understanding of education services. The market liberal theorists point out that those who benefit most from the process of education are individuals, and argue that the state should not bear the full cost. To these theorists, education is a choice of personal consumption; therefore, a part charge or full cost recovery would be justified and the 'user pays' principle would be a logical arrangement for financing the education provision. Private foreign students fell into the category of personal consumers and it would not be justifiable for the state to subsidise endlessly these non residents in the economic hard times. The user of the educational services should bear the cost of their consumption, especially those private foreign students from the rich Asian industrial countries like Japan, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. The philosophic basis of the foreign student policy changed when the full cost fee recovery policy was introduced in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Educational services became an international commodity for sale and a source of foreign exchange earnings. Attendance at educational institutions was now associated with choice by education customers. Private foreign students became full fees consumers of the education services in a commercial sense rather than a beneficiary of a host country which offered aid. New Zealand adopted a new private foreign student policy in 1989 within clear guidelines that quotas should be dropped and full-cost fees should be recovered without any subsidisation by the New Zealand taxpayers. Nevertheless, New Zealand remains an aid providing country and does not shy away from the responsibility to provide aid to its dependent or neighbouring developing countries. The Official Development Assistant programmes continue offering scholarships to the students from these countries. The private foreign student policy opens up opportunities for New Zealand education institutions to take in any number of private foreign students providing that they are full fee paying students. The expected revenue was NZ$100 million if New Zealand could successfully attract one percent of the foreign students in the world market. The policy itself was designed in good faith to encourage and promote New Zealand trade. It also provides incentives for educational institutions to be efficient and enterprising. The policy is still at its emergent stage. My study leads me to conclude that New Zealand has to think through the pricing mechanism, collective overseas marketing strategies and infrastructures, measures to ensure good business ethics and the development of the niche products which would further enhance its export education trade.