Governing Asian international students: the policy and practice of essentialising ‘critical thinking’

ABSTRACT

Migration flows have shaped Australian higher education since the colonial era. In the last two decades, Asian mobility has literally changed the face of Australian campuses. Government policies and university regulations have, paradoxically, moved to reinforce a Western-centric curriculum and pedagogy. This paper investigates this paradox by examining how Asian international students in Australia are governed by a homogenised educational process via a regulatory state that is underpinned by both neoliberal and post-colonial ideologies. The paper argues that ‘critical thinking’ is used both as a totem pole to attract Asian students and a governmental yardstick to measure their academic performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Critical thinking
• international students’ mobility
• neoliberal governance
• regulatory state
• Asian international students

Acknowledgements

The paper benefited from scientific debates during international meetings on the topic. These meetings were supported by the IMISCOE Cluster on International Student Migration and Mobility and Swiss National Center of Competence in Research nccr – on the move. The comments from the three editors and two anonymous reviewers were also helpful in shaping this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Swiss National Center of Competence in Research nccr – on the move.