concept of a 'social imaginary' by Rizvi and Lingard (2010), this chapter argues for an alternative 'social imaginary' that shapes the identities of international students in higher education and frames the challenges to which policies are the solution.
It advocates an educational paradigm that regards everyone, irrespective of where they come from, as — in Confucius's terms — 'educable' and having the right of equal access to quality education.
of an irreversible trend of the globalising market economy, where they enter into a culture based on the assumption that Western education is by its nature 'superior', matching the supposed 'superior' Western culture. Consequently, the policies to meet the demands of market forces of international student enrolments and the massification of higher education are also prescribed as desired interpretations of, and responses to, these market-based changes. Education itself is deemed a utilitarian product, being 'instrumental to goods which lie outside the realm of knowledge and rational or critical understanding' (Heath, 2002: 38). Within the micro-fabric of this social imaginary, these international students in classrooms are imaged as inferior market products. They are 'characterised as passive, dependent, surface/rote learners prone to plagiarism and lacking critical thinking' (Ryan and Louie, 2007: 406), and the educational policies of standardisation of graduate attributes and assessment criteria are the necessary solution.
It is through this social imaginary of market relations between the ideal- type Western student and the attractiveness of English-based knowledge and the 'deficient' international student, desiring this knowledge, that the current social relations among key stakeholders of higher education are contested, questioned and renegotiated. Globalisation of higher education has heightened the sense of identities and belongings of these key stakeholders, and reconfigured the social relationships among and between them. Simon Marginson (2011) explicates that higher education institutions in Western countries have rested on 'an antinomy' since their beginning. The antinomy, according to Marginson, consists of two crucial elements: a place-bound locality and universal mobility of knowledge. The rationale of higher education institutions is grounded in the real location where the function of transmitting universal knowledge happens. Neither knowledge function nor the institutional location is, by itself, enough to constitute the attraction of such institutions. The attraction of Western education institutions to international students is anchored in their location as well as the universal nature of education. In the higher education scenario, this antinomy means that international students are first of all attracted to the place where English is spoken, and at the same time to the possibility that the knowledge they gain in their learning process is universal. In the Australian context, international students come to this country precisely because they want to learn the local language and culture, and because they wish to gain universally mobile knowledge. The dramatic
increase of international students on campus involves a significant reorganisation of social order, transforming all stakeholders, educators and policymakers as well as international students and local students alike, and at the same time changing the nature of the social relationships among them.
Policymakers in the Australian higher education institution sector, in the name of quality assurance and accountability, have moved to pursue neo-liberal reforms of corporatisation and marketisation, implementing an intense managerial agenda across the higher education zone (Rizvi and Lingard, 2010; Hil, 2012;
Marginson, 2009, 2011 and 2012; Saunders, 2010). Academics, under pressure to conform as well as cope with increased workloads and intensified measures of managerial accountability, have reported a dramatic decline of both professional satisfaction and educational autonomy. Within this broad trend, there have been accusations that academics have been pressured to lower standards and to pass international students and fee-paying students. This context has produced a critical backlash against what Richard Hil calls 'whackademia', where 'academics have been reduced to administrators and facilitators of formulaic, googlised, dumbed-down education' (2012: 9).
In this context of a university environment of surveillance, regulation and academic resistance, international students have enrolled with remarkable success. The geographically displaced international students have adapted themselves to their new learning environment and have learnt to understand the educational expectations of their teachers and the cultural practices of their new living surroundings. Bewildered by a new academic culture and new language environment, these students often recount negative experiences studying in a supposedly multicultural university (Song and Cadman, 2012). Their learning styles and social behaviours, derived from different cultural heritages, are often questioned, and pose significant challenges to the nature, value and quality of the academics' lives in the hosting education institutions (Gu and Maley, 2008).
Consequently, the participation and presence of international students in campus life has shifted the established cultural dynamics between students and teachers and has presented Australian higher education with an 'ontological' challenge to transform itself in the process of globalisation (Barnett, 2012).
Up till 2010 this international flow of students has largely been one-way, with the exception of a very small proportion of social sciences and humanities
students from Western countries making the reverse journey. China's latest ascent, however, has prompted an inverse trend led by Barack Obama's announcement of the '100,000 Strong' initiative, a national effort designed to increase the number and diversify the composition of US students studying in China (US Department of State, n.d.). The Gillard government, in its Australia in the Asian Century White Paper (October 2012), also takes the initiative to develop specific opportunities and funding sources for students from under-represented groups to study in Asia.
This one-sided flow of the student population has resulted in higher education in anglophone countries becoming a primary site of academic contention and investigation. Large quantities of research have come to light in the past two decades, rigorously debating the challenging issues related to the existence of higher education. To a great extent, issues being investigated in the research published in English are framed by the established educational traditions in anglophone countries. Central to the debates over changed/changing higher education are questions concerning the nature, value and quality of education (Shah, Nair and Wilson, 2011), and what Western education can offer, and is offering, to non- Western students. The performance of the newcomer is measured against the perceived ideal in the host institutions. Where non-Western cultural heritages are mentioned, they remain peripheral and complementary and in relation to the norm: explicitly, the relative lack of proficiency in English and the cultural barriers that hinder the transmission of knowledge, which constitutes the pivotal activity of higher education teaching. Where quality has to be upheld, international students, with their lower English competency and cultural otherness, pose a real threat to the well-established academic conventions of the hosting nation.