A WORLD REPORT SPECIAL EDITION ON THE PACIFIC RIM : THE SOUTH RIM : Education : Billion-Dollar Industry Grows From Importing of Students : From elementary levels to universities, schooling proves big business in Australia. Asian recruits find they enjoy greater freedom.

“I like it better here. There’s more space; the students here are confident, even super-confident,” says Margaret Hong, a shy 18-year-old from Hong Kong who arrived in Australia just weeks ago to begin her last two years of high school.

Hong typifies one of the successes in Australia’s economic push into Asia--what is called the “export of education,” but means the import of students, from preschool to university age.

Hong’s new school, Pittwater House--a private, nondenominational Christian school in Collaroy, in Sydney’s Northern Beaches area--actively recruits students in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

Nearly 15% of its 800 students are from overseas--from those four countries plus Japan, Taiwan, Thailand, Sri Lanka and Fiji. These days, 15% is a typical proportion of foreign students in Australia’s private secondary schools, and in the universities too.

The large number of Asian students in big Australian cities, combined with a lingering Australian cultural awkwardness toward Asians, explains the success of “Asian Dance Nites” put on by local dance-party impresarios and hotel ballroom managers.

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In Canberra, the capital, the government has not overlooked the financial potential of the schools. Pittwater House, for instance, has received Export Market Development Grants from the Australian government, says Richard Morgan, the school’s executive officer.

The grants help cover the costs of participation in “education expos”--traveling recruitment shows that Australian universities and secondary schools send to Hong Kong and Southeast Asian capitals.

“In Hong Kong, the students don’t stand up for themselves so much. Here we can choose our own careers,” said Hong, the Pittwater House student. Unlike the Roman Catholic girls school she attended in Hong Kong, Pittwater is coeducational, which she finds refreshing.

“My parents want me to get the best HSC (higher school certificate, which serves as a university entrance ticket if scores are high enough) and then go to a British university,” she said.

That’s a point on which Australia’s education authorities would like to change Hong’s mind. Aggressively competing with British, U.S. and Canadian universities, they hope to persuade students like Hong to choose an Australian university or college.

Education planners see the growing number of overseas students as a way to attract Asia’s newly wealthy middle classes.

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In one case, the links between prestigious Geelong Grammar School near Melbourne and its Thai alumni are so thick that the school has decided to open an offshore branch at Chiang Rai in northern Thailand in 1996.

Offshore branch campuses are already popular in the university sector. They have obvious cost benefits for the Asian students and their parents, but education planners here are divided on the economic wisdom for Australia. Some point out that offshore campuses export Australian jobs.

Meanwhile, there are intensive efforts to integrate the various sectors, both in marketing, quality control and the education itself.

“Schools and universities market themselves individually and in consortia,” said Bill Street, general manager of the International Development Program of Australian Universities and Colleges.

Established in 1969, the IDP runs Australian Education Centers in 15 countries, mostly in Asia. It has a staff of about 300 abroad and 80 at its headquarters in Canberra.

In contrast with the United States, where foreign students are typically graduate students, foreign undergraduates form the largest proportion in Australia’s “international education” drive, about 70%. And Australian authorities expect students to return to their home countries at the end of their studies, as they overwhelmingly do.

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In 1984, there were 18,000 overseas students at Australian universities and schools. In 1994, there were 63,000, a spectacular increase in one decade.

Statistics provided by the government Department of Employment, Education and Training show the top 10 sources of foreign students in 1993 were Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and the United States.

In the “second league,” say sources familiar with more recent, unpublished statistics, the fastest growth is coming from India, Vietnam and Iran.

Importing students is widely regarded here as a lucrative industry.

One study by a private consulting firm, Syntec, estimates the amount brought into Australia by foreign students for tuition and other purposes will exceed $1.5 billion by 1998, up from $1.27 billion in 1994.

Australian universities are increasingly dependent on the income provided by foreign students.

Most are full-time, fee-paying students, unlike the majority of local students, who pay a modest fee.

“The income from foreign students’ fees is now a major element in the operating budgets of most Australian universities,” said one university official. Many universities say 10% to 15% of their student populations are from abroad.

For overseas students already here, that’s the rub.

“Despite enormous increases in international student numbers . . . there has not been a parallel increase in student support services,” said Marjoree Sehu, a Malaysian medical student at Melbourne’s Monash University and an official of the National Liaison Committee for International Students in Australia (NLC).

“Overseas students complain that library and computing resources are often inadequate,” Sehu said. “There is overcrowding in tutorials and lecture theaters. We have the same complaints, actually, as local students.”

Debbie Stothard, also a Malaysian student, added: “We have no say in how our fees are spent, and a lot of overseas students think they are not getting their money’s worth.”