Stricter Australian Skilled Immigration Rules Curb Higher Education

20 Aug 2010

The introduction of strict rules for skilled immigration in Australia is invoking the danger of losing a large number of international students wanting to study in Australia to pursue different courses of study. This warning was issued by several technological universities of Australia.

Ross Milbourne, Chairman of Australian Technology Network stated that this will inevitably result in a loss of a whopping 36,000 jobs in Australia.

Mr.Milbourne cautioned that if the fall in the number of foreign student enrolments in Australian universities is around 30 percent, the $18 billion export higher education sector will lose $3.3 billion each year in the period of three years. And even fallout of 10 percent in the university commencements will result in the total losses of $1.1 billion annually in three years time. It is also expected that strict Australian student visa norms will result in a decline of 35 percent in the number of university students in Australia.

All these are imminent signs of economic suicide for Australia’s export education sector, added Milbourne, who also happens to be the Vice-Chancellor of University of Technology, Sydney.

He was responding to the recent findings by Curtin University modeling which revealed that higher education was suffering severe damage from the tighter Australian skilled migration rules meant for foreign applicants seeking Australian student visas. Australian immigration rules were made a lot tougher to curb growing menace of fake and bogus colleges proliferating in Australia.

Sydney university professor feels that the issue of likely collapse of foreign higher education market does not seem to bother the government of Australia. And, that Australian government’s policies are the root cause of this problem. It’s being feared that the opposition is even going to drag the problem to a worst scenario, stated the professor.