Foreign deaths need reporting

A FAILURE to collect information about the cause of death in those rare cases when an overseas student dies in Australia leaves educational institutions exposed to media speculation and damaged reputations, an expert warns.

"We render the international sector vulnerable by not having such basic information as cause of death readily available," said Monash University's Chris Nyland, an authority on student safety. It was "very poor reputation management".

Universities and colleges must alert the federal Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations when an enrolment ends before the course is completed.

But when the reason is death, the department does not demand a cause since the institution may not know. When the cause was known, the institution should be required to give this information to Canberra, Professor Nyland said.

Universities Australia chief executive Glenn Withers said it was not the job of universities, although they co-operated with the authorities.

"In the tragic case of the death of any student, the coroner is the appropriate source for reporting cause of death information," Dr Withers said.

Shadow immigration spokeswoman Sharman Stone echoed Professor Nyland's concern and called for an inquiry into student deaths where federal authorities were yet to be informed of the cause. Dr Stone prompted the federal government to release information that 51 overseas students had died in the year to November last year.

When federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland reported the 51 deaths to parliament last February, all he could say was that 14 had died in accidents and three of illness, leaving 34 with an unknown cause of death pending official advice from, for example, coroners' reports.

"If you don't know why people have died, you can't institute measures to help avoid these deaths," Dr Stone said. She said the Department of Immigration and Citizenship was the logical authority to collect information from the states about the death of overseas students since it issued visas.

A vice-chancellor who would not be named said that in the case of a student death, some universities had a useful practice of requiring a death certificate, which states a cause of death, before closing the student's file.

The DEEWR's latest figures show 39 deaths of overseas students in the year to June 30. For more than half the deaths, no cause is included.

Where a cause of death is given, 11 were the result of accidents and four from natural causes, the department says. Ten were Indian nationals, meaning this group was over-represented since it accounts for 19per cent of overseas students.

An analysis of the 51 deaths by the HES, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Monash Centre for Population and Urban Research suggests young Australians die at five times the rate of overseas students. Overseas students aged 20 to 30 had a death rate of 1.14 for every 10,000 last year. Suicides and car accidents gave locals in the same age group a higher death rate of 5.6 for every 10,000 during 2007, the latest year available.

16/07/2009