Why are our cash-strapped universities scaring off overseas students?

Universities across Australia are preparing for a flood of sexual assault victims to come forward following the release this week of the Human Rights Commission’s survey into sexual assault on Australian university campuses. They boast of spending millions on a 24-hour national hot line, sexual assault counsellors and compulsory sexual consent courses for staff and students.

Last week I sent out letters to every Vice Chancellor asking them why they are risking our reputation as a safe place for overseas students to study by embracing this dubious rape culture campaign. Why would affluent families in India, China or Malaysia consider sending their precious daughters to study in such campuses? None of them were willing to address the issue of the risk to the overseas student market.

Last weekend I published a major feature in The Weekend Australia – In The Accuser’s Favour –  exposing what’s happening here and the risks to our university system. Here are some of the key points:

• Many watching what’s happening are bewildered by our intellectual elite’s capitulation to what they see as a misleading propaganda campaign.
• According the police reports collected by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics university campuses are roughly 100 times safer than the rest of the community. There were 14 campus sexual assault reports to police between 2012 and 2016 years compared to 24,498 across the state.
• Margaret Cunneen SC, who as one of NSW’s most senior crown prosecutors is renowned for securing convictions in rape cases, believes such figures paint the true picture: “All the official data shows a very low incidence of rapes reported on campuses and although we know rape victims are reluctant to come forward, there’s no logical reason why this would particularly apply to the intelligent, well-educated girls going to universities.”
• The problem is juries are reluctant to convict without proper evidence in these he-says, she-says date rape cases hence the feminist extremists are giving up on the criminal justice system and brow-beating the universities into getting involved in adjudicating such cases – as happened in America with disastrous results for the university system.
• American universities across the country are being sued by young men who have been falsely accused of such crimes. Of the numerous Federal court lawsuits against the universities they’ve lost the majority of cases involving accused students, losing 53 cases and winning 37. Currently 170 more such cases are in the pipeline.
• In America men seen as ‘outsiders’, nerdy, shy young men who don’t relate easily to women, are quickly branded ‘creepy’ and are particularly at risk of false allegations. A Federal Judge in Massachusetts ruled against Amherst College following legal action against the university by a young Chinese student Michael Cheng who was wrongly accused of sexual assault two years after a female performed oral sex on him when he was passed out drunk.
• That’s just one of many cases involving international students, particularly Asian students. In 2014 Colgate College in New York reported half of all students expelled for sexual misconduct were international students of colour – yet these young men comprise only 6 per cent of the student body.
• The vulnerability of those nerdy young men should have Australian university administrations very worried. Buying into the trumped-up rape crisis campaign risks losing not only full-fee paying overseas female students but many males deterred by our increasingly anti-male university culture.