The comment was made yesterday by Monash University researcher Bob Birrell after Mr Bowen announced a new points test for skilled migrants, giving more weight to English proficiency and high-level qualifications while weakening a monopoly enjoyed by Australian universities.
It is the latest in a series of reforms making it harder for education providers to use the prospect of permanent residency to recruit fee-paying foreign students into low-quality courses.
At an Australian Industry Group function in Sydney yesterday, Mr Bowen said the new points test, to start next July, should attract highly skilled "symbolic analysts" to solve complex problems facing the nation.
Hair stylists and cooks prospered under the old skilled migration system.
The new points test rewards superior English for the first time, relaxes age limits to attract skilled migrants with experience and advanced qualifications, and gives the same points to overseas university degrees as it does to local qualifications.
The test will work in step with July's new skilled occupation list, which removed low skill jobs such as hairdressing in favour of engineers and health professionals.
Dr Birrell said it would be difficult now for foreign graduates of Australian institutions to qualify as skilled migrants unless they reached at least professional level English, represented by a score of seven in the International English Language Testing System.
"It will hit hard with those who struggle to get seven and that includes East Asians," he said.
China is Australia's biggest education market and well-known universities are especially reliant on overseas student income from commerce and business faculties.
Dr Birrell said education authorities and providers had resisted any requirement that graduates score a professional standard of seven in IELTS.
This was despite research showing that in 2006-07 about a third of the overseas students who had graduated in Australia and won residency as skilled migrants lacked the English proficiency to work as professionals. The employment success of these graduates in their chosen professions also was poor.
"The assumption was that by studying here in English and experiencing the Australian culture, they would be much better able to fill a skilled position," he said.
"That has proven incorrect. Australian education, as it is currently conducted, does not necessarily deliver the professional skills, particularly the communication skills, needed in the Australian workplace.
"There is no longer any justification for privileging domestic training."
Although overseas qualifications are now recognised, coming to Australia to study still attracts a five-point bonus.
Ecuador-born Andres Ortega, 30, a masters student at the University of Sydney, is one of those who could benefit from the new points system.
He now stands to earn points for his undergraduate degree in agricultural engineering from Texas A&M University in the US.
Glenn Withers, chief executive of the peak body Universities Australia, welcomed the new emphasis on advanced skills and the relaxed age requirement.
"Good universities here and overseas will benefit from that," he said.
The new system also would help local universities recruit the next generation of academics and researchers, he said.
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