Australia to tighten Indian student restrictions

Updated September 3, 2008 20:17:00

Indians make up the second largest cohort of international students in Australia. But now India along with a number of other countries has been moved up the Australian Government scale of immigration risk with applicants subject to tougher scrutiny.
The new rules could affect the flow of students from India and that's a cause for concern for Australian universities.

Presenter: Tom Fayle
Speaker: Jennie Lang, international pro-vice chancellor, University of New South Wales, Singapore.

LANG: Well we have a large number of international students and a smaller number students in India, around 400. We're concerned because that cohort is a high achieving cohort, and we source our students from very good secondary schools for undergraduate programs, and from very good universities either in India or overseas for post-graduate programs. So we've built up a fairly good profile of the students that are going to come to our university and succeed, and that's the experience that we've had with students from India. They add to diversity in our classrooms, they speak perfect English, and they're highly motivated students and they come to focus on their academic studies and then to return home to India.

FAYLE: As I've said most of the students here from India are in vocational education. Do you think the universities should be exempt from these rule changes?

LANG: We definitely do think the universities should be exempt because we're looking at students that are motivated by different factors. The students that are coming to the University of New South Wales come with a firm focus on advancing their careers. They're not necessarily seeking to migrate to Australia, they're seeking to advance their careers so that they can go home and work in the family business or work anywhere in the world in large multinational organisations. So we would really like to see universities exempt from this policy because it's not fair to have one policy applying across such a broad spectrum, and a spectre that includes significant numbers of students coming into shorter VET programs.

FAYLE: Now the Australian export education market is worth billions of dollars to this country. Where does the Indian market fit into that?

LANG: Well when you speak in broad national terms it's a significant component of the export of education, even though the numbers are much smaller in the group of eight leading universities, they are an important component and that particular group has been steadily growing over time, and a number of the leading universities in Australia have invested heavily in building important education relationships that are highly strategic, that are two-way and we just feel that it's doing a disservice, not only to Australian universities, but also to the top achieving students from India who want to come and study here.

FAYLE: So have you already had some negative feedback about these changes?

LANG: Well we have, I have one of my senior staff in India as we speak and she's been ringing in every two to three days saying Jennie I don't know what's happening because the students that we're attracting, the quality is just getting better and better, and they have concerns that they will not be able to meet the strict visa processes now to come to UNSW, even though those students of a similar ilk have been with us and have done very well and have done the right thing, and gone home and made a contribution back in India.