Overseas education –the changing trends #1

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 Author: Shikha Pahwa

The role of foreign universities in shaping the Indian graduates into future leaders is all too well-known. But over the past two decades, Indian students’ mobility to foreign universities has become an integral part of the India’s higher education landscape. Though the Government of India had been allocating more funds to higher education to improve the quantity and quality of tertiary education being offered within its borders, capacity has been insufficient to meet demand. At the same time, with rising GDP per capita income, more students from across India were able to participate in higher education abroad. According to the reports, presently around 104,522 are studying in the US followed by over 97,000 in Australia, 25,905 in the UK and over 6,040 in New Zealand.

The beginning

While USA and Europe were the most favored destinations for overseas education of Indian students, Australia took a leap within few years of its entry in the international education domain. Australia entered the race somewhere around 1989-1990, and in 2001, its growth increased by 10.8 per cent, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).

The supply of internationally-oriented degree and non-degree programmes steadily rose. Western economies were increasingly seeking to both recruit international students and retain them after graduation either because of high jobs availability in countries like Australia or low birth rates in countries like Canada. The importance of migration opportunities for overseas students arguably tops the chart for the reasons of studying abroad as reflected by the statistics produced through a 2006 survey undertaken by Australia’s Monash University. According to the findings, 75% of Indian students who completed a university education in Australia in 2003 applied for and were granted permanent residency visas. The author of the study, Michiel Baas, suggests that the most important reason Indian students chose to come to study in Australia was not the academic reputation of the universities but the opportunity to gain permanent residency visas. Canada and New Zealand also started following a point system to process immigration based on criteria like age, educational background and experience.

Education institutions worldwide increasingly felt the need for an international student population, on or off campus. In the last few years, Australia and New Zealand has seen emerge of large number of private players piggy banking on the opportunities of Permanent residency to the international students and offering PR related courses like cookery, hair dressing and community welfare [Vet sector]. This trend gave way to the mushrooming of agents in India as they were offered handsome commission. These agents neither had the expertise nor the infrastructure to be an agent of good universities, but private institutions didn’t pay much attention to the credibility of the agents and appointed them to expand their reach.
Decline in the overseas education
The factors which contributed to the rise of international education became the reasons for the decline as well. Many Indian students chose education as a pathway for migration or permanent residency thereby putting money and their careers at stake. The mushroomed educational institutes offering courses in sync with the migration policies got maximum inflow of international students. But in the absence of strong quality measures some of these institutions could not sustain. The result was that thousands of Indian students studying in Australia had been left stranded, with the sudden collapse of the some of the not so credible institutions in last few months.
Australian Government strengthened checks on the student visa applications from India in Aug 2009. The forensic analysis of applications conducted by Australian High Commission in New Delhi revealed that over 50 percent of cases contained at least one fraudulent document, with many of these cases containing numerous fraudulent documents.

The vet sector that once contributed to the growth in the number of Indian students going to Australia saw a major drop in its numbers with the refusal rate declining from 8.2% in Jul-Oct [2008-2009] quarter to 40.6% in Jul-Oct [2009-10] quarter. This increase in visa refusal rate, in our view, would make situation even worse for some of the private colleges in Australia who would suffer significant cash flow crunch. This is likely to send more private colleges in Australia out of business.
Australia’s tighter migration rules clubbed with bad publicity over a spate of assaults on Indian students and change in migration policy resulted in decline in enrolments from India. The turf was then turned to U.K by the agents and non serious students alike because of its relaxed migration rules.
But unusual increase in Visa applications for U.K from North India alerted the UK border agency. In October-December 2009, they received 13,500 applications, whereas in the same period in 2008 it was 1,800 and in 2007 it was 1,000. Fearing abuse of the visa system, the UK border agency announced a temporary suspension of student visas in north India.
I feel that these changes are in the interest of the students and their families. This would promote quality education and would also help the system get rid of the Australian colleges that mushroomed in the last few years to encash the Permanent Residence wave by lowering their entrance requirements specially related to English. These changes will ensure better employment opportunities for the students both in Australia and elsewhere as they would have the genuine skills set required to be job ready anywhere in the world.

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