The Press reported this week the apparently opposed views of the Minister for Tertiary Education, Steven Joyce, and the chairman of the Vice-Chancellors' Committee, Derek McCormack, with regard to the ability of international students to move on to become permanent migrants of this country.

On the one hand the vice- chancellors' are advocating making it easier for international students to migrate to New Zealand following graduation, whereas the minister wants to encourage international students to come here for academic reasons, not as a shortcut to obtaining permanent residency.

As the industry body for New Zealand's export education industry, Education New Zealand would argue that these two views are not necessarily mutually exclusive, provided that international students meet and fulfil New Zealand's skilled migration needs.

Globally, export education is a highly competitive business.

New Zealand is in competition with other countries that offer broadly similar services.

Thus, New Zealand will have a comparative advantage and be successful in trading in export education if it can provide that service to a better quality and/or at a lower cost than its competitors.

The various sources of comparative advantage in export education include:

• the quality of the institutions providing the service
• the strength of quality assurance and accreditation processes
• the portability of the qualifications gained
• strength of marketing and promotion
• the intrinsic attractiveness of the countr
• socio-political environment including personal security
• immigration policies
• cost
• the policy and regulatory environment and
• the quality of student support services offered by the institutions.

All of the above are important, but the immigration-education linkage is absolutely critical.

Immigration policy and practice can limit the size of the international student pool through requirements around entry to New Zealand, the attractiveness of the service (for example. by limiting what students can do while studying in New Zealand or the nature of the pathways to permanent residency), or both.

One of the best ways to grow the export education industry is by allowing motivated and talented individuals the right to migrate upon the completion of their qualifications, but with an important prerequisite - they should meet New Zealand's skilled migration needs.

Graduating international students provide the New Zealand economy with a ready pool of highly motivated and qualified individuals who are more readily able to adapt to New Zealand than other migrants (because in most cases they have lived in this country for several years), and have even paid the full cost of their education (not subsidised by the New Zealand taxpayer).

By linking migration pathways for international students to a tightly focused list of New Zealand's skilled migration needs, this will avoid the situation that has happened in Australia over the last 12 months where the migration pathway was open to a very wide range of lower- skilled migration occupations.

This led to a boom in lower-level courses, and according to anecdotes Australia started filling up with a large number of people taking courses such as hairdressing just to qualify for migration to the Lucky Country.

This sort of policy change is certainly not what we are calling for.

Rather, we are seeking export education to be viewed as a critical partner in the race for global talent acquisition. This can in turn provide a boost to the industry at the front end through strengthening New Zealand's comparative advantage.

Talent acquisition is increasingly an issue because globally there is a shift in developing countries moving away from low-skilled economic activity towards more of a knowledge- based economy that have a core requirement of needing a well- educated workforce which can master and manipulate information and technology tools and platforms, while continuing to adapt to innovation pressures.

This is where export education can help - a thriving export-education sector produces graduates with quality qualifications, and this provides a ready pool of qualified individuals to help close skill gaps in the New Zealand economy.

We welcome the Tertiary Education Minister's support and aspirations for the export-education industry.

The industry, already New Zealand's fifth largest foreign exchange earner, generates over $2.1 billion in net foreign exchange per year for the economy.

The industry is a direct generator of over 45,000 jobs for Kiwis, and this excludes indirect employment and consumption affects.

To reach this level since 1989 is a major success story.

We share the minister's aspiration that the industry can go much further.

Last year industry revenue grew by 10 per cent or $61 million.

With the minister's support we believe we have the potential to grow another 10 per cent this year.

Growth in this industry creates jobs, attracts more brain power to New Zealand, and helps our economy to remain competitive in the global marketplace because our future workforce is increasingly at ease with a range of international languages, cultures and beliefs, and will be able to tap into international connections and networks through the relationships that they have formed.

Growing our share of the globally mobile student market involves support from the Government not just through funding, but also through student-friendly immigration and education policies. * Robert Stevens is the chief executive of Education New Zealand.

(Source The Press)