Australia's student visa applications drop

Australia has recorded a drop of almost 63% 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% 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%.

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%.
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. —PTI