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More than 50 Asian postgraduate  students went on a hunger strike in Melbourne, Australia, after failing an exam  they claimed contained material they had not been taught.

The students this week said they would have to pay thousands of dollars extra to complete their masters degrees in accounting at Central Queensland University by sitting a supplementary exam in June.

Those who had failed claimed they had scored  40 to  49 per cent  but should be allowed a pass because one question worth 20 marks was not covered in the study guide.

Although based in north Queensland, the university also operates out of office blocks in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and on Queensland's Gold Coast.

It is the second time  in the past 12 months that international students have protested about  CQU.

The current hunger-striking students said many of them would not be in Australia to sit the supplementary exam because their visas were due to expire this week.

But a university spokesman rejected the students' claims and said the university would not be pressured by media reports into lowering its standards.

This may have been a reference to a decision by Melbourne-based Deakin University to offer free summer tuition to 265 students who had failed an undergraduate accounting subject.

Deakin acted after overseas students held a series of protests that attracted media attention but critics said the decision had made  results a 'negotiable commodity'.

The CQU spokesman said 56 out of 477 students,  11 per cent of those sitting the course, had failed the Issues in Management Accounting examination.

'CQU is responding in a fair manner to those students concerned about this outcome but to extend special privileges to these students  as they have requested  would be a disservice to other CQU students and to our colleagues in the sector,' he said.

'The university has reviewed the examination and can find no evidence to support students' claims [and] there will be no remarking or reconsideration of these results, as a group.'

The spokesman said the immigration department was expected to allow an extension of the students' visas and, as the course was being offered in both term 1 and term 2, this would allow students who failed to re-sit the subject.

Individual students could apply for a review of grades.

'We will not deviate from procedures, policies and practices that uphold our academic standards in this or any other circumstance,' the spokesman said.

He said  CQU was not only safeguarding the quality and reputation of its courses but that of Australian higher education as well.



Asian students on exam hunger strike