The Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship announced changes to its student visa rules, in order to attract more international students Down Under, in an increasingly competitive higher education market.
The changes, also referred to by the regulatory body as the Knight review, were announced last week and will see student visa rules relaxed. The changes will now allow graduates to work in Australia for up to two years upon graduation.
"The measures announced following the Knight review are intended to encourage a sustainable increase in the number of overseas students choosing to study in Australia," a department official told Gulf News via e-mail.
A significant change to regulations is a reduction in the financial requirements of certain non-university higher education and vocational education and training applicant nationals, previously regarded as high risk.
Until now student visa applicants holding Chinese, Indian, Sri Lankan, Bangladeshi and Indonesian passports — to name a few — were regarded as high risk. However, the now streamlined rules put students from the above-mentioned nations on a par with other first-world applicants from countries like Canada, US and UK.
"Under the new streamlining arrangements, students enrolled in Australian universities for a tertiary degree course will be required only to state they have sufficient funds to pay their course fees and support themselves for the duration of their study," said the unnamed official. "They will not, in general, be required to provide evidence of this, although the department will retain the ability to ask them to do so."
Branch campuses
However, Australian university officials in Dubai do not believe the rule changes will lure students away from the UAE's Australian university branch campuses.
Raymi van der Spek, Executive Director of Administration at the University of Wollongong in Dubai (UOWD), believes the new rules will not have much effect on the Dubai campus' student numbers. "Our transfers from here to the Australian campus are probably running at less than two per cent of our student population," he said. "Many students apply for transfer and sometimes don't go through with it because they work out it will cost more, so it's not always about the visa."
He added that the Dubai branch of UOWD will continue to be more cost-competitive for students in the UAE in comparison to its home campus. He believes this is due to the increased value of the Australian dollar.
With countries like the UK tightening its student visa rules and the US aggressively trying to recruit international students, Van der Spek believes the Australian visa changes are in part a bid to win over a portion of the increasing mobile student market.
"Undoubtedly the hope for Australia is to get back a lot of the international student share they've lost over the last few years," he said. "The competition is going up all around and the US will have a big impact on that."
In the 2010-2011 period the Australian government granted 250,000 student visas. The 2010 Australian Education International report stated there were more than 9,000 UAE students enrolled at universities in Australia, nearly 700 of whom were UAE nationals.
Rashi Bhattacharya, Gulf States Country Director for IDP Education, believes the new rules will be welcomed by students in the UAE looking to study abroad — especially Indian nationals. Bhattacharya reported a significant decline in recent years from the UAE's Indian students looking to Australia for tertiary education due to the 2009 reported attacks on Indians in the country.
Difficult to deal with
"The number of Indian students looking for Australian university placement through IDP has declined in the last two years due to the 2009 attacks," she said. "However, other students also found it difficult to deal with Australian visa regulations but the proposed changes will smooth out those issues." However, Christopher Pilgrim, Senior Vice-President of Student Services and Recruitment at Murdoch University Dubai, said the institution has not witnessed a decline in student transfer requests to its Perth campus.
"We didn't see a decrease in transfers or students intending to transfer because I think people are quite rational and know the attacks were isolated events," he said. "But I can see the new rules having a positive impact, especially for students coming to us on Indian passports."
Key points of new regulations
Under the new Australian student visa rules, undergraduates and postgraduates who have studied in Australia for at least two years will be allowed to work for up to two years upon graduation.
Students will no longer be required to show evidence of supporting funds. They only have to state they have sufficient funds for course fees and to support themselves during their studies.
