Universities Australia chair David Lloyd continues to spread the lie that international education is Australia’s second largest export.
“If international students say they don’t feel welcome in Australia, we run the risk of undermining the second-largest export industry in the country and damaging the economy”, Lloyd told ABC TV.
As you can see, Lloyd has derived his fantastical export claim by ascribing exports of iron ore, coal, and natural gas to mining, thereby making education the second-largest export industry.
Alan Kohler debunked Lloyd’s claim in an article in The New Daily, noting that “the proposition that education is Australia’s largest non-mineral export is almost certainly false”.
“To arrive at the figure of $48 billion for education exports, the ABS simply estimates the entire spending of foreign students, including tuition fees and goods and services”, Kohler notes.
“But they don’t adjust for money earned here rather than brought in, so it’s not just a guess, it’s a fiction because most students work to support themselves”.
“In fact, international students may be sending more money home than they bring in, so international education might be an import, not an export”:
Bravo, Alan Kohler, for exposing the truth about one of Australia’s biggest statistical lies.
It is time that the ABS, economists, policymakers, the media, and the education sector acknowledge these inconvenient truths and stop peddling the fantastical $48 billion export figure as fact.
