Students' English skills attacked

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Australia's Education Minister Julie Bishop has dismissed suggestions that a third of foreigners who graduate from universities there have poor English.

Ms Bishop was reacting to a study by demographer Bob Birrell who said many of the students should never have been admitted to the institutions.

She said Professor Birrell's claims were an extraordinary attack on Australian universities.

She added that foreign students had to meet international language benchmarks.

Professor Birrell based his findings on a survey of 12,000 foreign students.

He found that more than 50% of South Korean and Thai students did not have good enough English to work in a professional capacity in Australia, as did some 43% of Chinese graduates.

Seventeen per cent of students from Singapore and India, where English is more established, also fell short of the required standard.

Lowering demands

Professor Birrell's report said that there was a mountain of anecdotal material that some foreign students struggled to meet course requirements.

It also said that universities coped with the poor English of some of their students by lowering the English demands of their courses.

He said that institutions did not like to ask students to take supplementary English language lessons because this would make it more expensive for would-be applicants, and therefore less attractive.

Education is Australia's fourth-largest export. Foreign students, mainly from Asia, spend A$2bn ($1.5bn) on higher education per year.