Your feelings towards internationals. (2 Viewers)

[lionking1191]

Maybe someday Chinas Uni's will be better than ours.

they already are, better than some of ours.

 

[decypher]

Who cares if they don't work - they are the ones that are paying...

Unless you're on some sort of full scholarship then you'll be paying for uni. HECS is just a scheme that defers the payment for uni until you have the ability to pay (the government pays for you now and you pay them back later). It is by no means a free education.

 

[spartan31234]

no the government subs the fees eg enginnering costs 7000 per year for locals and 29k per year for ints, we will have a 28k Hecs debt after 4 years they will have 116k cost ( no loan)

 

[Nasonex]

Why dont they just piss off in their home countries? Esp the ones from China, that do fuck all

 

[Kalashnikov47]

This is absolutely insane... those international students contribute millions of dollars to the Australian education system... and you guys are picking on them?

yes they may different from us, yes they may have weird behaviours, but why would you even care? how about you put yourself in their shoes, you are alone in a foreign country, wouldn't you stick with your own group and have greater sense of security?

Dont pick on those poor internationals, just ignore them... and actually... i appreciate the money they give us...

 

[Kalashnikov47]

Unless you're on some sort of full scholarship then you'll be paying for uni. HECS is just a scheme that defers the payment for uni until you have the ability to pay (the government pays for you now and you pay them back later). It is by no means a free education.

yes we local students also have to pay uni fee, but that is cheaper than what those international students have pay... they have to pay full fee for transport, they have to pay for their visa...

 

[TehAzner]

Wow... this is turning out to be a very long thread. So many different views.

Well for me, this topic is also one which I have experienced first-hand last year in my first year of uni. First off I have to say that at the university that I'm in this year, there are PLENTY of Asian international students, esp. the Commerce department (3 guesses for which uni I'm at ). However not all of the international students I've met are bad. There have only been a handful of international students that are very hard-working and face the same difficulties as us local students; such as balancing working 3 days a week and studying and maintaining a D (or in 1 case I know of, an HD!!) average.

With this being said, the majority of my encounters with international students has not been pleasant. Just to keep it brief I'll just tell you guys a little story so that you can add your own first-hand wonders/disasters with int'l students after this post. Ok... with my experience, we had a group assignment for a Commerce subject which was worth 40% (split into many parts), and I just so happened to get appointed an International student for this project. Throughout this project, this certain international student not only had trouble communicating in English (every weekly group meeting we had she would only answer Yes/No...*sigh*), even with the written report she had plagiarised her contribution from the Microsoft website from China. How did I find this out you may be asking? I was busy proof-reading our assignment and I was accidentally pressing the "Ctrl" button along with my mouse and it just so happened to link me to the corresponding mentioned website. Furthermore for the group presentations the student had nothing prepared, not only because they never understood the course material, but also they had skipped each and every single lab workshop for the course. You would not believe the stress that I had to put up with for 13 weeks... and I still managed a well-deserved D.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm 100% Asian (Hongky pride ftw!) and I spoke to the student in Chinese (Mandarin, thank god I went to Sunday chinese school) all the time just to see what they "actually" thought of the project. But spare a thought for my 2 other partners; who were equally as unproductive unfortunately. The thing was that they were also 100% Asian; but ABCs (Australian Born Chinese).

My conclusion: For those about to start uni in 2008 (espescially in the Commerce Area of study), don't be afraid to meet new International students, but the safest option you should take for group projects is to hook up with old mates in your classes and let the internationals group together for the projects.
My 2 cents

 

[erm]

the safest option you should take for group projects is to hook up with old mates in your classes and let the internationals group together for the projects.
My 2 cents

What you said prior to this suggested that you had no choice who you worked with. So what is it? - are we delegated groups or do we choose groups? (or does it depend/vary).

 

[TehAzner]

I did have a choice. I chose two people that I had made new acquantainces with but we only had 3 people in our group. The minimum number of people for the project was 4, so in the end we had no choice but to accept the lecturer's appointment of an international student. I should have been a bit more proactive in getting my old school mate in joining us... his group came first in our stream as well

 

[Triangulum]

What you said prior to this suggested that you had no choice who you worked with. So what is it? - are we delegated groups or do we choose groups? (or does it depend/vary).

normally it's the tutor or course coordinator's choice how to form groups. sometimes random, sometimes you form your own groups, sometimes it's based on who wants to do which topic.

 

[spartan31234]

I also think the UNI's should make sure these students have adequate language skill... UNSW..i knew it would do cheap stuff, because of it big capasity it probably takes lots of ints to make money

 

[Affinity]

Wow... this is turning out to be a very long thread. So many different views.

Well for me, this topic is also one which I have experienced first-hand last year in my first year of uni. First off I have to say that at the university that I'm in this year, there are PLENTY of Asian international students, esp. the Commerce department (3 guesses for which uni I'm at ). However not all of the international students I've met are bad. There have only been a handful of international students that are very hard-working and face the same difficulties as us local students; such as balancing working 3 days a week and studying and maintaining a D (or in 1 case I know of, an HD!!) average.

With this being said, the majority of my encounters with international students has not been pleasant. Just to keep it brief I'll just tell you guys a little story so that you can add your own first-hand wonders/disasters with int'l students after this post. Ok... with my experience, we had a group assignment for a Commerce subject which was worth 40% (split into many parts), and I just so happened to get appointed an International student for this project. Throughout this project, this certain international student not only had trouble communicating in English (every weekly group meeting we had she would only answer Yes/No...*sigh*), even with the written report she had plagiarised her contribution from the Microsoft website from China. How did I find this out you may be asking? I was busy proof-reading our assignment and I was accidentally pressing the "Ctrl" button along with my mouse and it just so happened to link me to the corresponding mentioned website. Furthermore for the group presentations the student had nothing prepared, not only because they never understood the course material, but also they had skipped each and every single lab workshop for the course. You would not believe the stress that I had to put up with for 13 weeks... and I still managed a well-deserved D.

Experiences similar to this one suffer selection bias -> those who speak perfect english would not be recognised as an international student. And just a hint.. at uni, splitting a group assignment into individual parts and expecting each part to be perfect is usually not a good approach. People in general tend to place less priority on a group assignment.

 

[TehAzner]

Experiences similar to this one suffer selection bias -> those who speak perfect english would not be recognised as an international student. And just a hint.. at uni, splitting a group assignment into individual parts and expecting each part to be perfect is usually not a good approach. People in general tend to place less priority on a group assignment.

I don't suffer from selection bias, if you read my post carefully I do mention that there are very hard-working, down to earth international students, and like any group, there are only a handful of them. Thing is, we didn't have a choice to split it into several parts, it was part of what the course wanted. Seriously though if I was given a choice I would have done it all by myself from the start (which I did after the handing in of our first part). NO ONE takes group assignments seriously at uni...

 

[iamsickofyear12]

And just a hint.. at uni, splitting a group assignment into individual parts and expecting each part to be perfect is usually not a good approach. People in general tend to place less priority on a group assignment.

That may be true but it is much easier than having to schedule group meetings where everyone can work together. I was at uni 4 years and had group assignments for just about every subject and I'd say at least 95% of them involved splitting up the work during the tutorial and then putting it together just before it was due with little to no group discussion. Usually the group just went with whatever the person who decided to be the leader said.

 

[Affinity]

I don't suffer from selection bias, if you read my post carefully I do mention that there are very hard-working, down to earth international students,

I hope you understand what I meant by selection bias. There are probably quite a few international students whom you do not identify as such because their English is fine. I am not saying that one would miss all of them, but they are more likely to be overlooked than say one whose English is poor.

 

[TehAzner]

I hope you understand what I meant by selection bias. There are probably quite a few international students whom you do not identify as such because their English is fine. I am not saying that one would miss all of them, but they are more likely to be overlooked than say one whose English is poor.

Ah righto, I get your point now . Point taken on board.

 

[candygore]

Well, there are some Australians who are and aren't racist, and I believe most of them are not because I wasn't discriminated or anything while I was living here (I'm Korean). Maybe once or two but it wasn't a big deal and I believe that Asians need to accept that they can get discriminated by not only pure Australians but also some other cultural groups. I mean, Australia is not their country and things can't go in a way that it used to be while they were in their own country, especially those from places like Korea or Japan which isn't very multicultural yet. I don't understand those Asians who expect every people to welcome them because although this is 21st century, racism still exists and will be in the future.

One thing that I do agree with some of you is that a lot of Asians are being the fucked ups who think they are the best and all while they can hardly speak English. I especially hate this whole 'Asian gang' thing and how their bad behaviours spread to other Asians. I also accept that a lot of them cause problems in the public and etc. My friend and I don't really hang around with Koreans because we don't want to get our reputation lowered by being like them and hanging around with them.

To be honest (and this may sound weird as I am bitching about my own race but anyway), I don't know much about other Asians but I don't really like most of the Koreans because they think and behave as if they are still in Korea and whenever they get bitched or discriminated by other race, they never think about what they have did wrong. Plus, they also ingnore those who grew up here, like me just because we are much more familiar with Australian culture than Korean culture which I think it could be included in 'racism'.

But really, not all Asians are bad and not all Australians are racists.

 

[Affinity]

Thing is, we didn't have a choice to split it into several parts, it was part of what the course wanted.

I bet the course/lecturer didn't specify that each part is to be done separate person. It will be quite hard for the university to justify this practice of essentially giving out four individual assignments and then transfering marks from better pieces to worse ones by averaging

 

[TehAzner]

I bet the course/lecturer didn't specify that each part is to be done separate person. It will be quite hard for the university to justify this practice of essentially giving out four individual assignments and then transfering marks from better pieces to worse ones by averaging

Oh you wouldn't believe it. The lecturer/course-coordinator went to great lengths to make sure everyone "contributed". She even gave out forms (which everyone made sure that each person contributed 25%). Every part of the assignment was marked by her personally. No joke.

 

[TehAzner]

To be honest (and this may sound weird as I am bitching about my own race but anyway), I don't know much about other Asians but I don't really like most of the Koreans because they think and behave as if they are still in Korea and whenever they get bitched or discriminated by other race, they never think about what they have did wrong. Plus, they also ingnore those who grew up here, like me just because we are much more familiar with Australian culture than Korean culture which I think it could be included in 'racism'.

But really, not all Asians are bad and not all Australians are racists.

Sorry if this is a double-post, but I wanted to make a statement.

Yep, I agree with you 100% of the way with what you have said, especially your last sentence. I haven't met any Korean international students yet, but yeah for most of my first year at uni, some of my friends (including those of Australian background) have mainly had these pesky encounters mainly with the ones from China. So many of them are doing Commerce it's not funny, the ones that are doing Commerce/Law are better but some of them are pure rich snobs who dress themselves in LV, Gucci, Armani and think they are better than everyone. Be prepared Candygore.