Wednesday 13 April 2011

Ethics?? do we have them?

If you gathered already, I am in Australia attending an education workshop and having lots of food, both for stomach and for thought. Interesting really this country, even though I have been passing by so many times, never did I land in it, so this is a great opportunity to see for myself what the students see, and at the same time tell my new students about the various things that they can engage in and what they can accomplish when they are here. I also met many Arab students of course, mainly from Saudi though, both men and women and children too. Fun, they said when I asked them how they find it. So I am glad that our third largest sector for students’ enrolments is loved by the students.

Most of the education consultants including myself were not happy about the visa changes that the government had introduced, we all complained and nagged about it to each other and to the education institutions that we met, and we all thought that it is not fair for both parties, and for the student that visas get rejected on the grounds that students are not genuine or do not have enough money etc. However, the lecture by John Moorhouse today was an eye opener. After giving us all the information about the growth in the education sector, and the wealth that it brought to Australia and, and, he started to talk about the reasons behind the changes that took place last year, and are again going to be stricter. (http://www.newsroom.immi.gov.au/media_releases/878?page=4&) if you check this link, you will be appalled for what some educational consultants had been doing just to increase their earnings. At the end who is the victim?? Our beloved student, after all he is the one that loses on the hands of those that pretend to be carers of education and passionate about learning.
Okay, let me start from the beginning. Some education agents, start their agencies, then go to Australia and establish schools, that are a cover up for bringing people and letting them loose to look for jobs. So a student come to them, they first of all charge him for their services, then help him to obtain a loan from a bank, submit his file for the visa, which gets approved, the student pays the fees, departs, reaches Australia, finds out that the school is just a recruitment agency, that finds him a job that pays enough so he survives. The numbers of students hit the roof, and the exploitation of employers was evident, so the government smelled the odour that was coming out of the gutters, and with the death of one of the students, the whole thing was exposed. Of course, what the media had blown up in all proportions was nothing but rich agents/schools owners paying media men to write rubbish in the newspapers to stop fresh students from applying to Australia. I dont want to remind you about what happened in Bahrain and how the media turned everything around and smudged the real story, the same had happened here too.
Imagine a country changing its rules because of unethical behaviours and striving to be richer than rich on the back of students whose only crime is their need to study and improve their livelihood.

Whom do you trust these days? I for one do not trust anyone any more as each and every person I meet either has an ulterior motives, doubts or lying, and what happened to our office is a gigantic proof of the behaviours that the Australian immigration had found out. We have schools that stole the money of the students, agents stealing money from the students, agents who we worked with shut us up even though we had the documents of their students to bring them offers from universities, and started to work on their own after years of training and establishing the office for them, we had schools that came to us and did a whole promotion around the gulf with our help, and when the student went they found the owner in prison and nobody in the school but them. So, what I am really trying to say here is that, people beware, and watch where you are going. As they are all here to get you.

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