Australia visa norms to be relaxed

Express News Service

First Published : 07 Feb 2011 02:53:26 AM IST

Last Updated : 07 Feb 2011 09:26:31 AM IST

CHENNAI: A proposal to relax student visa norms from April to benefit those seeking higher education in Australia has made facilitators in India hopeful of seeing more students going there and reversing a two-year decline.

Effective this April, key norms like showing funding for lesser duration of stay and allowing multiple sponsors rather than first-blood relations will change, said Harvinder Singh, a representative from IDP Education India, a company that is jointly owned by 38 Australian universities and is the co-owner of IELTS.

There are 38 countries that will have their assessment level lowered across one or more subclasses, as per an announcement made by Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Chris Bowen, and Minister for Tertiary Education, Senator Chris Evans, in December last.

Student enrolment from India in Australian universities had tremendously dropped over the past couple of years, down by about 70 per cent, due to reasons like stricter visa norms, increase in cost of education and violence against Indian students settled there. “The number of students looking at migration had gone down drastically and continued to remain so. From the southern belt, we see students are mostly interested in post-graduate courses unlike Punjab, which was primarily a Vocational Education and Training (VET) market,” said Singh. Interestingly, it was these VET courses that drove migration from India but unfortunately the market was completely wiped out after widespread charges of racism. But with changed norms, VET courses may become attractive again. Assessment levels are a risk management approach applied to all student visas, determining amount of evidence visa applicants need to supply and the level of scrutiny.

An Australian education fair organised by IDP in Chennai on Sunday saw 17 universities participating.