Australian universities have a longer history of undergraduate students from other countries, especially from Asian countries, than US universities have. Only in the last couple of years have US universities expressed interest in increasing their international undergraduate populations significantly - and this is of course about the money because international undergraduate students have to pay not only out of state but out of the country tuition.
Seeing this in action at an Australian university makes me wonder how wise a decision such an increase is. International students make up a substantial percentage of the population, and they get funneled, or choose to be funneled, into particular majors, in particular business, accounting and such. Unfortunately, this starts a cycle of increased class size with limited interaction with students. The students do not get the support they need to make it effectively through the courses, and if their grades suffer due to lack of support they will complain because they are paying such a high tuition. So the university is obliged to put at least some support structure into place that allows students to get either language or other support - and this costs of course money that may use up the tuition profit.
This increase in international students and class sizes is of course also no fun for the folks teaching these courses -- language barriers, cultural barriers, increase in class size and pressure from administration.
This all begs the question how US institutions moving in this direction are planning on dealing with an increase in these particular numbers.
On a lighter note: I went to the Arts Gallery of New South Wales that has some great art work from Australian artists (http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/galleries/australian/)
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| Art Gallery of NSW |
I particularly like the work of Sydney Nolan, but there were also some cool paintings from Fred Williams, some Monets and Reubens, and some very cool bark paintings: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/?media=bark-painting
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| Emus feeding |
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