Australia has increased the visa fee for foreign students from AU$710 to AU$1,600. (Representative)
New Delhi:
Australia has announced it will cap international student intake at 2.7 lakh by 2025 in a bid to tackle record levels of migration that have caused home rental prices to soar.
The cap includes higher education courses as well as vocational education and training courses, Australian Education Minister Jason Clare said today.
The move will impact Indian students wishing to go abroad for higher education, especially those from Punjab, who account for a large number of such students.
“In June 2022, Australia capped its international student intake at 510,000. This was reduced to 375,000 in 2023. They have now further reduced the annual planning tiers. These tiers are given to individual universities for all international students and not just Indian students. Universities will allocate the quotas by country and then by state,” said Sunil Jaggi, a member of the Australian Migration Agents Registration Authority.
“Students who were preparing to register in February will be affected by this announcement. Students from Punjab will be the worst affected,” he added.
“This will affect my career. My family is taking loans for my education because the cost of studying in Australia is quite high,” said a student from Haryana who wants to study nursing in Australia.
“The Indian government should present the students' point of view to the Australian government,” said another student.
It is noteworthy that the Australian Education Minister, during a visit to India last year, signed an agreement to expand access to Australian higher education institutions for Indian students.
According to India's Ministry of External Affairs, around 122,000 students from the country study in Australia. India's Quad partner is the fourth most popular destination for Indian students studying abroad, after Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.
Australia has also increased its non-refundable visa fee for foreign students from AUD 710 to AUD 1,600, another move apparently aimed at reducing migration levels.
Canada has also announced new restrictions on its temporary foreign worker program. Starting September 26, companies will only be able to employ low-wage foreign workers up to 10 percent of their workforce, down from 20 percent previously. The decision to limit the number of low-wage foreign workers comes in response to rising unemployment rates in Canada. The overall unemployment rate has risen to 6.4 percent, with the rate for younger workers reaching 14.2 percent.
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