“Death toll” report challenged: DEEWR

The federal government has challenged recent Fairfax newspaper reports about international student deaths in Australia, claiming the figures quoted in the articles don’t tally with its own data. The 1 July reports in The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, based on coronial cases across Australia, said at least 54 international students had died over the 12 months from November 2007. But DEEWR told Campus Review that Australian authorities didn’t know how the papers had arrived at that figure. “It is not based on official records,” a spokesperson said. The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) said reports from educational institutions indicated 39 foreign students had died in Australia between July 2008 and June 2009. The Education Services for Overseas Students (ESOS) Act requires providers to notify the department within two weeks when an overseas enrolment ceases prematurely, and to give the reason. This suggests that so long as institutions meet their reporting obligations, DEEWR’s figures would be reliable. DEEWR said providers weren’t obliged to notify the cause of death, but some had. It said 11 of the 39 deaths had resulted from accidents and another four were from natural causes. It said the deaths involved students of 14 different nationalities, including 10 Indian students. It’s unusual for the government to volunteer this level of detail. Some commentators have interpreted this caginess as a cover up, with the Fairfax papers reporting claims that deaths of international students were being kept quiet in an attempt “to protect the lucrative $15.5 billion overseas student market”. Most commentators haven’t gone this far, but some accuse governments of reacting to international student welfare issues with spin rather than substance (https://www.campusreview.com.au/pages/section/article.php?s=News&amp;idArticle=7512, CR 09.06.09). There’s evidence that international students are doing it tough in areas like safety, social inclusion, accommodation, employment and transport, and are particularly vulnerable to street crime and exploitation by unscrupulous employers and education providers. However, both the DEEWR and Fairfax reports suggest that the incidence of international student deaths in Australia is statistically low, given the sheer numbers of overseas students in this country. Rudimentary analyses of Australian Bureau of Statistics data suggest that between two and five times as many deaths could be expected among a similar cohort of Australian residents (CR, 07.07.09).