(dpa) - Immigrants from non-English
speaking countries are finding that a university degree is not a passport to a
well-paid job in Australia, a study released Tuesday showed.
Language difficulties relegate two-thirds of immigrants to jobs not
commensurate with their qualifications, compared with less than half of those
who arrive from English-language speaking countries, Monash University demographer Bob Birrell found.
"They're not contributing to the skilled workforce, but they're
contributing to urban population growth and housing pressure," the Melbourne academic said.
Birrell called on the government to halt a skilled-migration programme that
since 2001 has brought in 212,000 people and to focus spending on giving
migrants already in Australia the language skills they need to impress
employers.
Birrell found that a third of foreigners who graduate from Australian
universities and use their degrees to gain permanent residency aren't landing
jobs that match their qualifications because of their poor English and lack of
job readiness.
He accused universities of lowering standards to ensure overseas students
managed to get degrees.
Australia has 240,000 fee-paying foreign students. As a group they represent
15 per cent of the income of universities and one in five of students enrolled.
India came in second behind China as a source country.
"The biggest problem is poor English and a lack of
occupational experience," Birrell said. "It also raises questions
about courses that are being reduced in demand and or complexity to cater for
overseas-trained students."
He said the worst performance was in accountancy, where only a
fraction of foreigners training in Australian universities were getting jobs as
accountants.
"We are graduating large numbers of people whose English is well short of
the standard that you would expect for a university graduate," he said. "It
means that universities have got to ask themselves serious questions about what
they're producing."