Dear Netters:
I have been posting figures of Indian students going abroad for higher
studies. Here is a report on visas for Australia. We know why Australia
is shunned
by Indian students.
63% drop in student visa applications from India in Australia: Report
PTI | Aug 3, 2011, 10.54AM IST
Read more:student visa applications from India|Simon
Marginson|Melbourne University|Indians in Australia|immigration
department
MELBOURNE: Australia has recorded a drop of almost 63 per cent in
offshore international student visa applications from India in the last
financial year, according to latest official data.
The figures also show an overall drop of 20 per cent in the offshore
international student visa applications, media reports said on
Wednesday.
The Indian market has been the hardest hit by the fall in offshore
applications with a drop of 63 per cent.
The June month Immigration Department's quarterly report on the student
visa programme revealed that the number of offshore applicants from
India dropped from 18,514 in the 2009-10 financial year to just 6875 in
the 2010-11 financial year.
Apart from this even applications from China, Australia's largest
source country for international students, also dropped 24.3 per cent.
Melbourne University higher education expert Simon Marginson said the
drop showed the sector was still a way off from a recovery.
"[There is] no sign that we have yet reached the bottom of the curve,"
he said.
Marginson said the steep drop-off in offshore applications was largely
because of federal government changes to the visa criteria and skilled
migration list.
"Demand for Australian education in India always was relatively soft
and the elimination of the migration-related industry run through
education agents, plus the image problems triggered by the violence,
has permanently depressed the prospects of recruitment in that
country," he said.
Professor Marginson said the drop in applications from Vietnam - down
31 per cent - and China was of greater concern.
"China and south-east Asia are our core markets [and] far more worrying
is the defection of part of the student market in China and Vietnam,
where demand is more education-centred, and the quality of students
coming to Australia has been higher than those coming from India," he
said.
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