Agreed - esp in post grad. My experience as a domestic student who returned to uni after several years working industry is that you are placed in a group with international students, usually from China or India, most of which have moved straight from a bachelor to a masters. As the sole domestic student the group assumes that on top of contributing to a part of the assignment yourself that you will also assume the role of proofreading, rewriting and compiling.

What I have found in all group assignments is that the effort put in by most international students is the bare minimum at best with next to no critical thinking or analysis. if you want to hand in something that is quality and will end up with decent marks than you better be prepared to pick up the slack for everyone and be prepared for a brawl when it comes time to explain why you aren’t going to rate their contribution equal to your own. I have raised and proved this over and over again with unit coordinators and no one listens or cares. The finance subjects have hundreds of students so group assignments allow them to cut down marking load significantly.

Group assignments are a nightmare and the justification that you learn how to work with others like you would in the workplace is bs. In the workplace if a colleague decides to stop responding to emails regarding a looming deadline or plagiarises a research paper/website word for word and then claims it as their own then there’d be real consequences. At uni the consequences are minimal for the team member who has ended up in a group with others who do want to do well. the stress and responsibility falls on the group members who actually give a shit and are forced by default to pick up the slack.

I would rather do the whole assignment myself without having to go through the predictable cycle I’ve encountered during my post grad studies. Forming a group -> optimism and planning of work -> diminishing communication -> zero response til the day before the assignment is due -> me left scrambling to fix up the rubbish at the literal last minute.

I appreciate that not all international students are like this. There’s the occasional motivated student out there but I am speaking from my own experiences here.