Research is often a process of exploring rabbit holes, and in 2019 I allowed myself to fall down one (perhaps as a distraction from the PhD I was trying to finish). I had found, in the process of writing a journal article with my PhD supervisor, some documents about the Australian Organisations’ Co-ordinating Committee for Overseas Students (AOCCOS). This group of organisations in Sydney was tasked (and funded) by the Department of External Affairs (now DFAT) to support what were then called ‘overseas students’ in Australia. Rotary, the Country Women’s Association, Apex, the Sydney University Graduate Women and other groups and individuals got together to work out how to support the growing number of students coming to Australia for study. AOCCOS was not the only organisation doing this work – other groups were established in major capital cities and over the years in regional centres.
Using the archival documents I had found I wrote a paper for the 2019 ISANA Conference, which was later published as an article: Overseas students coordinating committees – the origins of student support in Australia? I always knew, however, there was more to this story and so I have slowly chipped away at finding out more about these groups and what they meant for international education in Australia. I applied for and was privileged to be awarded a 2025 National Library of Australia Fellowship; this was an opportunity for me to really dig into the Co-ordinating Committees and the way international students engaged with the Australian community.
Over the first eight weeks of my Fellowship, I have found out a lot about these groups, but, as is always the case with research, many questions remain and many other rabbit holes beckon. The Co-ordinating Committees were, for the most part, well-organised groups who had the best interests of international students at heart. The issues they grappled with are remarkably similar to the issues that international students, and their support networks, deal with today. Issues such as price, availability and quality of accommodation; difficulties making friends with Australian students on campus; challenges adjusting to culture, food and language in Australia; homesickness; visa confusion; and funding. Co-ordinating Committees put ideas into action and lobbied government on behalf of international students in an effort to support their education, often with the belief that Australia had a responsibility to support its regional neighbours in this effort.
And, as most of those working in international education today would recognise, these groups also had to deal with a number of government departments, all with their own ideas about the purpose and role of international education. A1973 policy paper put forward by the Australian Union of Students noted that ‘[M]ost of the problems which exist for students under the existing programmes are there because of the arbitrary and sometimes vague division of responsibilities between three Commonwealth departments, foreign affairs, education and immigration.’ [1]
When I started this project, I thought that perhaps these Co-ordinating Committees represented a level of engagement with international education that the broader Australian community does not have today. Perhaps they were the secret sauce to help rebuild the diminished, but much discussed, social licence for the sector?
This remains an unanswered question for me, but I am less convinced of this hypothesis than I was at the beginning of my Fellowship. These groups represented the community, but the whole community did not come along with them. Also, their position as an arm of the state (the groups were funded largely by the Department of External Affairs as part of the aid budget) meant that many students were suspicious of their intentions. In early 1980, amid a crisis for the Australian Union of Students that included a split from the Overseas Student Service (OSS) – the National Director of the OSS, B Ang, wrote that the only ‘purpose of these committees is to infiltrate and spy on overseas students and their organisations.’ [2]
The position of the student voice often vexed these committees. Student representatives were part of Co-ordinating Committees across the country, but their positions and roles were often peripheral. As the role of the Co-ordinating Committees became even more confused during the 1980s and welfare support was put in place to support the new category of ‘full fee-paying students’ in institutions, organisations deliberated their role. The President of the Melbourne Council for Overseas Students, Professor Lawson, noted in 1987 that ‘the council needed to evaluate itself since if we are not meeting the students’ needs then we are wasting our time.’ [3]
The Co-ordinating Committees had, up to this point in the 1980s, provided support to students regardless of their status as ‘sponsored’ or ‘private’. The funding they received from DFAT’s Aid Bureau (AIDAB) was ‘valid’ for all overseas students, until a new category of student was introduced – the ‘full fee-paying student’. The Department was very clear that government funding was not to be spent on these students, so airport pick-ups, accommodation and other welfare support was off the table. It seems that AIDAB had not thought of how this policy would affect the work of the Co-ordinating Committees. Committees across the country debated how they were to distinguish between different types of international students, if educational institutions had sufficient resources to support them and the prospect that in the near future ‘the subsidised student programme will be terminated and that all overseas students will be paying full fees.’ [4]
This was, as we now know, the beginning of the end of the Co-ordinating Committees and their efforts (the OSS had ceased any meaningful activity by the mid-1980s). By the early 1990s, international student welfare and support was firmly the responsibility of educational institutions and the professionals they employed. According to my original hypothesis, this moment is the rupture, where there is a break in connection between the Australian community and international students. A break from which the ‘social licence’ of international education has never recovered.
The answer is far more complicated than my simple hypothesis. The Co-ordinating Committees were not really fit for purpose by this time and the reliance on a small number of paid staff, and volunteers, was not viable. Add to this a 15-year effort of Coalition and Labor governments to reverse the Whitlam reforms that made university education free for Australian and overseas students as well as the Dawkins reforms, that revolutionised the structure of higher education in Australia. And perhaps most importantly, with the increasing marketisation of international education throughout the 1980s and businesses, agents, individuals and education institutions determined to profit from international education, community engagement was sidelined for massification.
There is no going back to the days of Co-ordinating Committees, but in those organisations I see connections to the people who now work in international education. Because those who became involved with international students did so often because they had, or wanted, an international life. And in the 1950s and 1960s you couldn’t just jump on a plane to Bali, or Thailand or Samoa. You had to find the international in Australia – and international students offered that. While travel is now (relatively) easy, working with international students opens up the world in interesting and delightful ways. Perhaps this is where we start with rebuilding links with community – by showing Australia, Australian students and the Australian community – what international education means to us as professionals working with international students.
[1] Tom Tescher, Simbarashe Mumbengegwi, and John Vines, Submission on a New Policy towards Foreign Students in Australia
(Carlton, Victoria: Australian Union of Students, 1973).
[2] ‘Australian Union of Students Annual Council - Pre Council Volume’, AUS, January 1980, MS Acc91.156, NLA.
[3] ‘Melbourne Council for Overseas Students - Minutes of the Executive Meeting 27th April 1987’, MELCOS, 27 April 1987, MS Acc91.156, Box 4, NLA.
[4] ‘Melbourne Council for Overseas Students - Minutes of the Executive Meeting 19 April 1988’, MELCOS, 19 April 1988, MS Acc91.156, Box 4, NLA.
Image: 1972 Interstate Conference, National Archives of Australia, NAA: A62180, 28/8/72/59