Since the turn of the 21st Century a radical change has occurred in Australian higher education: the student body has internationalised. While euphemistically we refer to this by the neutral and politically correct term of ‘international students’, in fact the change has been the ‘Asianisation’ of the student body so that roughly a quarter of the students on our campuses are from Asia. The Asian Century has arrived in higher education, and Australian universities are the better for it now and going forward.

How we think about the new demographics of the Australian campus has evolved over time. International students have been chiefly understood for the financial benefit their participation has brought. International students were merely seen as a utilitarian response to a constricted funding model in Australia. With the capping of domestic fees (and until recently the capping of domestic student numbers) international students were one area where universities could charge the market rate for students and thereby diversify and increase their revenue.

The fact that international students were paying more understandably led to the charge and criticism of ‘cross-subsidising’ by international students of the domestic student educational experience and universities’ research. The fact that the new students could pay more contributed to the image and stereotype of a rich, spoiled Asian student driving a flash car and living in an expensive apartment. This of course hid the reality of parents making serious sacrifices and drawing on long-term savings to provide the students mobility and the marginal living and employment conditions many international students were enduring. Within this context, international students from Asia were understood merely for the economic benefit they brought universities.