Soft Power and HigherEd national promotion agencies: Australia

Australia is one the World’s greatest exporter of higher education, and consequently one of the larger importers of international students, whose expenses represent in turn the third major source of the country’s GDP (Australian Government: 2015).

The Spring 2020 coronavirus outbreak has greatly affected the industry, with reportedly up to 21,000 jobs at stake: Australian universities has estimated the overall declines in revenue at between $3bn and $4.6bn (The Guardian: 2020). This outcome descends from the high dependence of Australian universities on international students, and on Chinese students in particular: in a sense, we can sustain that Australian universities are in this respects paying their exposure to international student intakes, and hence their success.

This duly accounted for, the Australian model is worth reviewing, as the promotion of the system can rely on complete support by government, and lays at the very centre of a conscious, explicitly-defined branding initiative led by the Federal government itself.

The promotion of Australia universities is directly managed by Austrade, the Australian Trade and Investment Commission, Government’s international trade promotion and investment attraction agency. The entity operates as a statutory agency within the portfolio of Foreign Affairs and Trade, with Austrade's Chief Executive Officer reporting directly to the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment (Austrade: 2020).

Austrade is responsible for the international marketing and promotion of Australian education and training. Through an extensive international network, Austrade gathers information internationally and eventually disseminates to the Australian education sector, to assist providers to make informed decisions and develop strategies to develop international relationships and business. A key priority is the development of transnational education opportunities in growth and emerging markets, especially in Asia. Austrade has worked with the international education sector to develop long-term market development roadmap to enable the sustainable growth of the sector into the future.

Also, Austrade fully acts as industry’s think-tank, maintaining a robust “Market Information Package (MIP)” to provide market intelligence, analysis, opportunities and data to support Australia’s international education and training sector.

Here, HEIs can gather information about:

• Business intelligence and market insights;
• Opportunities to connect with international customers sourced by in-market Austrade staff;
• Over 15 years of international student data, including tools to model, analyse and compare markets;
• Objective data and economic indicators depicting growth potential, the scale of opportunity and ease of access to a market.

As far as target countries are concerned, the agency publishes an updated "Market profiles" page, to "help you research, discover opportunities and learn about recent developments by the specific market" (Austrade: 2020). The page contains detailed info-sheet of some 56 different countries, which in turn arguably represent the nation’s geographical marketing foci, as far as tertiary education is concerned.

Brand promotion is taken very seriously by Austrade, to the point that the agency set up a Nation Brand Advisory Council and a Brand Expert Working Group (Austrade: 2020), in charge “to market the entire country – the twenty-five million people in Australia, every state and every territory, and every corporation” (Austrade: 2020). Australia’s brand is developed in co-operation with businesses and industry.

Austrade makes no mystery why branding is important for them, nor of the ties between international education and economics: “in the world today, there is intense competition for trade, investment, tourism, talent and influence. […] A unified and strategic representation of Australia’s capabilities will improve our global competitiveness, leading to more international people choosing Australia when buying, investing, studying and travelling” (Austrade: 2020).

Last, Austrade highlights the soft power features embedded in its brand promotion initiative: “Nation brands are measured through several attributes. These include a nation's physical beauty, business environment, contributions to the global culture, technological standing, and the quality of its workforce. A nation's overall rank is a combination of 'harder' and 'softer' attributes, for example, technology and physical beauty” (Austrade: 2020). In the same webpage, branding and soft-power country rankings, included the Softpower30, are listed.

The hands-on international marketing part is left to the “Study in Australia” initiative, which is directly managed by Austrade “and contains links to other official Federal and State Government departments and authorities” (Study in Australia: 2020). The website is a classic portal intended to offer prospective students the most updated information about their studies in Australia, including information about immigration policies, scholarships and grants, and single universities. On the other hand, though, the portal does not account for the intense marketing activity the SiA carries on globally: for example, a SiA stand is being organised in the all the major HEI conferences, such as NAFSA, EAIE, and APAIE. Further, SiA seems to be present with dedicated branch offices/activities c/o the capillary Australian diplomatic network. Also, it should be taken into account that there exists some region-centred "study in" initiatives (such for example Study Canberra and Study Queensland) that somehow complete and further implement Australia’s international marketing efforts.

SiA website is translated in 12 different languages, broadly accounting for Australia’s geographic neighbours (e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Indonesian, Vietnamese and Korean); social media presence is highly developed, with SiA pages being maintained in Weibo and WeChat, besides the more traditional social media providers. Not much else is available about SiA, especially for what regards personnel, budget, and branch offices, thought the figures available for Austrade, and the specific focus on national brand, provide a clear-cut account of Australia’s national interests and efforts in the field.