The PIE caught up with Rohit Sharma, ETS’ senior vice president of global mobility solutions, at The PIE Live Asia Pacific 2024, where he spoke of a “reset” for Australia’s international education sector and underscored the critical role that testing providers can play in supporting the industry’s shift towards long-term sustainability.

“Australia is going through what I’m describing as a reset in terms of how they think about international education,” says Sharma.

“The sector is one of the most important sectors in the country in terms of contribution to GDP,” he said of the industry worth AUD$36.4billion to the nation’s economy.

“There’s a lot of anxiety amongst higher education institutions as to what the future will entail because some things are yet to be played out, such as whether there are going to be caps or how agent commissions for onshore activity is going to be impacted.

“There is a lot of uncertainty right now,” said Sharma, who is therefore calling on the government to provide the sector with clarity – and soon.

“Even if things are going to change, [it’s important] the sector knows what it’s going to change to. That clarity becomes important because sometimes it takes years to rebuild confidence if students are still evaluating different educational destinations.”

Sharma strongly believes that testing and assessment has an important part to the play in Australia’s sector “reset”, especially when it comes to providing institutions with the quality, well-prepared students they are seeking.

“In that regard, we believe we are quite strongly poised to help the sector,” says Sharma.

Sharma says that ETS’ existing offer, TOEFL, is focused on ensuring a student coming in to a country is ready to be an “active and engaged and productive member in an academic setting”.

However, it’s not just about ensuring students from non-native English-speaking backgrounds are ready to operate productively in an English-speaking academic environment. He also highlights the importance of building and assessing other – increasingly important – skills that will allow organisations, institutions and governments build “prosperous societies”.

“One way of doing that is to make sure that we are helping individuals identify the skills that they have and, through assessments, highlight that to people that are interested in looking at that.

“We do a lot of measurement around what we call durable skills – the ability to operate in a team setting, critical thinking, empathy, perseverance. I think those kind of things are going to become, in some ways, even more important as you think about the future, because the way changes are happening.

We do a lot of measurement around what we call durable skills – the ability to operate in a team setting, critical thinking, empathy, perseverance

Rohit Sharma, ETS

“Technical skills you can acquire and they can become obsolete, but some of these skills continue to be there. These are a couple of areas in which we can help institutions and the Australian government.”

Sharma, in his senior position, has a unique view of the test-taker experience and the impact international education can have on the trajectory of a life, having taken TOEFL himself several decades back.

“Life has come in some ways a complete circle for me” says Sharma, who grew up in India – where he did his schooling and undergraduate degree – before going to the US for his master’s.

“I had to take the English language assessment and I took TOEFL at that time,” he shares with The PIE News.

“As I reflect back and see how my career has evolved – having had the opportunity to study in the US and, as a result, had the opportunity to live and work there after – that definitely opened up the doors and windows of opportunities that as I reflect back, would perhaps not have been possible.

“It helped me become what I describe myself as – a global citizen – and has given me the ability to transcend cultural barriers.”