What would you expect to find when walking into a classroom at a top Australian university that prides itself on cultural diversity? Ideally, you would hope to see eager faces, hear assorted accents rippling across the room, and feel the hum of students huddled in campfire circles deep in discussion. Having recently completed a postgraduate journalism degree at one of these revered institutions, I can say that it should be the reality – but it isn’t.

With the enduring media fixation on the waves of Chinese international students being admitted on to Australian campuses, the lucrative billions flowing into the education sector, and the growing fear of Chinese interference, it’s becoming increasingly convenient for the public to overlook the collateral damage from it all: the students.

Australian universities to work with security agencies to combat foreign interference Read more

Choosing to pursue a master’s degree is a conscious investment in one’s personal and professional growth. Along with my fellow media candidates, a group made up of largely Chinese students, we believed our university’s international appeal would translate into courses designed to accommodate the cultural multitudes within our cohort. It soon became clear that the odds were firmly stacked against the Chinese students whose financial contributions were significantly responsible for keeping the degree afloat.

As one of the only local Australian Chinese students in my course, I occupied an awkward liminal space between the western education that shaped my upbringing and the Chinese heritage to which I was tethered. I often found myself as the only native English and Mandarin speaker in my class, which not only allowed me to engage more closely with my fellow Chinese students, but also afforded me a unique perspective into the unintended social experiment of Survivor Academia that was unfolding before me.

Classes heavily based in discussion and group work often became divided between the local students who band together to ensure a decent mark, other international students with English proficiency who gravitate together or join the local groups, and the Chinese students who cling to each other for solidarity and security. It wasn’t an exact science, but became a fairly reliable occurrence throughout my degree. Every student I spoke to desperately wanted to fit in but the language barriers and instinct of academic self-preservation eclipsed any desire for the cultural exchange of ideas.

Much has been made about what Chinese students can’t do and the skills they lack. The casual xenophobia already percolating in the current political climate has contributed to the portrayal of them as somehow defective: language deficiencies, an inability to follow basic discussions, and a failure to grasp academic writing styles. All this may be true as they begin their academic pursuits, but how many local students arrive at the gates of academia as fully formed intellectuals and writers? And what does it say about the institutions entrusted with their learning when they leave in the same state as they arrived? You can’t lean on these students as financial crutches and bemoan the burden of their presence in the same breath.

Until we humanise Chinese students in the public discourse, academic institutions will continue to use dollar signs as placeholders for their hopes and dreams

Chinese students are not oblivious to their perceived limitations; in fact, they are continually reminded of them as they navigate an education system that operates without them in mind. Concepts that local students struggle with become inscrutable, assigned readings take twice or triple the time to complete, and written assessments become Sisyphean tasks to overcome. A degree should be challenging but not insurmountable.

Whether it’s re-evaluating entry requirements, implementing supplementary language training tailored to course content, investing in bilingual teachers or translators in tutorials, the bureaucracies that willingly take Chinese students’ money need to invest in resources to facilitate their inclusion. Measures should be taken to ensure that students, both local and international, can focus on the experiences and ideas they have to offer each other.

Among the Chinese students I shared classrooms with were experienced journalists who worked at their home town news stations, staff writers for metropolitan papers, visual artists with featured exhibitions and aspiring documentary makers. If the appropriate communication avenues were employed, you would discover that for all the talk of Chinese students remaining in their bubbles, they’ve already taken a daunting leap of faith outside their comfort zones by choosing to come to Australia. This is a community bursting at the seams with untapped potential but, without the support structures to empower their learning and help articulate their needs, the championing of diversity will continue to ring hollow.

Until we humanise Chinese students in the public discourse, academic institutions will continue to use dollar signs as placeholders for their hopes and dreams. It is our collective loss if these organisations can’t muster the interest to try to understand their perspectives, especially when so many stretch themselves to understand us.

For a narrative journalism assignment, we were required to compose a personal essay that classmates would print out and write down their feedback to return to the author. Reading through the notes written by my Chinese peers, I noticed the Chinese characters scrawled throughout the pages from beginning to end; each character was a sign that the reader had to look up a term that was unfamiliar to them. These characters were footprints of the effort a colleague had invested into my work, trying to understand my writing, to hear my voice. The least we could do is to extend them the same courtesy.

• Yang Tian works for the digital community team at Guardian Australia