A Singapore-based academic says the reputation of Australian universities is falling in Asia to the point where revenue from foreign students could be at serious risk.
The former Queensland University dean, Professor Allan Luke, says this has happened while many Asian universities are cashing up and boosting their infrastructures.
Professor Luke is now based at Singapore's National Institute of Education and has told ABC TV's Four Corners that Australian universities are facing a much tougher future.
"They've been cut and they've been cut and they've been cut," he said.
"And as they've been cut they've been told to go get the money in the creation of the multi-billion-dollar Asian student export business.
"What that's done is, in instances, some of the bottom-end players have sacrificed quality.
"That has had somewhat of a detrimental effect to the reputation of Australian education more generally.
"It may appear to government and others that it's salad days because of the multi-billions of dollars of revenue that's coming in from the overseas student market.
"If you lose the core business and the heart of the operation in that process, ultimately you're going to go into decline.
"And you're going to be supplanted by universities with better infrastructure."
Australian universities earn $7.5 billion a year from foreign students and the Australian National University vice-chancellor, Professor Ian Chubb, says universities are now so heavily reliant upon full fee-paying Asian students that any major fall in their numbers would be catastrophic.
Ticky Fullerton's report The Degree Factories goes to air at 8:30pm on the ABC.
