As the Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, arrives on her maiden visit to India on Saturday on a four-day official visit that commences on Monday, the fate of hundreds of Indian students enrolled in vocational courses in Victoria seems to hang in the balance. What initially began as a law and order and alleged racism-based-opportunism issue that led to a spate of attacks on Indian students in May and June has blown into a scam involving Australia’s private vocational education sector and skilled migration programme, which commentators here say is far more potentially damaging to Australia’s reputation. The Australian media has been agog with reports of ‘shonky’ education operators comprising cooking schools without kitchens, flying schools without aircraft, and hair dressing schools where video tapes serve as the medium of instruction.
The resultant crackdown on private institutions has led to new apprehensions of dislocation and financial losses. Three private vocational institutes - two in Melbourne (Melbourne International College, which mainly offered hospitality courses, and Totally Indigo, a hair dressing and beauty school) and Sterling College, an aviation institute in Sydney, which were under investigation, closed down in barely five weeks between July 17 and August 19, after having declared bankruptcy. This has already resulted in the dislocation of hundreds of Indian (and other international) students.
In Victoria alone, 17 more private “high-risk” educational institutions are undergoing a “rapid audit” announced four months ago which is to report shortly and which could entail the closure of some, if not most, of these institutions. This threatens to dislocate hundreds, possibly thousands of Indian students, and it is not clear whether the market can accommodate their relocation or whether the authorities can finance the refund of tuition fees to those students who cannot be relocated.
There are an increasing numbers of students who have finished or will soon finish their courses to find that the local job-market has changed. This means that they will either no longer be in demand for their skills or that that they will no longer qualify to get the required points for permanent residency after having spent thousands of dollars on their education because accreditation/permanent residency requirements have since been made tougher.
This is a new cause for frustration among Indian students in Australia adding to their disappointment with the overall education experience in small institutions which may or may not have provided effective training. Going by Gillard’s official programme, it is not sure how much of these issues concerning thousands of Indian students will actually get addressed during her visit to India. Her official programme essentially comprises visits to elite Indian educational institutions in New Delhi and Chennai, promotion of quality Australian initiatives such as the Australia-India Institute, and a blitzkreig of interviews and meetings with the Indian print and TV media in these two metros. This is obviously aimed at damage control after the adverse publicity the attacks on Indian students and education scams generated in India.
Indian student issues are, however, expected to figure in discussions in her scheduled meetings with Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal on Monday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday and Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs Vayalar Ravi on Wednesday.
Gillard, a federal member of parliament from Lalor in Victoria, a state with the largest concentration of students from India and which witnessed the maximum number of attacks on Indian students, is also Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, and Social Inclusion.
In 2008, Indians accounted for the second highest number of foreign students in Australia at 17.8 per cent while Chinese students accounted for 23.4 per cent. Indian students are the fastest growing source of international enrolments, which in 2008 increased by 54 per cent as compared to 2007.
Of the 95,000 odd Indian students enrolled in universities and colleges nationwide, 47,512 alone are enrolled in Victoria.
