Australia's education minister raised concerns Sunday that a plagiarism scandal involving Malaysian students at an Australian-run university would damage higher education exports worth billions of dollars.

Brendan Nelson urged Newcastle University to reopen a case in which it secretly re-marked the assignments of 15 students who had been failed for plagiarism at a campus it runs in Malaysia.

The 15 were initially awarded zero marks for using unattributed material from the Internet in an assignment, but their former lecturer claims the university overruled his decision because it was concerned about losing revenue from offshore students * [correction] .

Unanswered questions

The students at the university's graduate school of business in Kuala Lumpur were subsequently issued pass marks, some of them receiving distinctions.

Nelson said a university investigation had failed to thoroughly examine the plagiarism claims and left important questions unanswered.

He said the scandal could sully Australia's reputation for high academic standards and damage the booming education sector.

"Perception and reputation in higher education is absolutely everything," Nelson told Nine Network television.

"If we have a number of instances involving one or more universities, whether in Australia or indeed at offshore campuses, which are considered and indeed found in fact to be totally unacceptable then obviously our entire reputation as a country is diminished."

Australia's higher education exports now total more than A$5.2 billion a year.

Nelson said the Newcastle University council needed to reassure him that its processes were impeccable.

Warning

He also warned universities against targeting whistleblowers who alerted authorities to corruption or malpractice.

"There will be absolutely no sympathy, from me or the Commonwealth government, for any university that seeks to vilify or to otherwise persecute an academic who brings forward a serious concern in the relation to the quality of education that is being delivered," he said.

The lecturer involved in in the Newcastle University case, Ian Firns, has lodged a complaint with the New South Wales state corruption watchdog ICAC over the affair.

There are about 150,000 students enrolled in local courses in other countries.

Singapore was the top education export market in 2001/02, with 22,000 students enrolled in Australian courses, followed by Hong Kong (20,655), Malaysia (18,500), China (17,000), Indonesia (9,900) and India (6,200). - AFP

Correction: Ian Firns, the lecturer involved in in the Newcastle University case, wrote to malaysiakini to correct the above AFP report. Firns said he had never claimed the university overruled his decision because it was concerned about losing revenue from offshore students. Instead, he has consistently said he had no idea why the university has taken the actions it has.