By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 01.07.2009 (IPS): The modern façade of its cities, cost-effectiveness and its high standards of education make Australia an attractive destination for foreign students. But the recent spate of attacks on Indian students has exposed the many ills afflicting the Australian education system, threatening its lucrative markets.

‘As long as you can pay, you are in’ has been the driving force that has catapulted education as Australia’s third largest export, second only to coal and iron, reaping rich dividends worth A$15.5 billion last year.

In 2008, there were 435,263 international students from 200 countries enrolled in Australian educational institutes, led by China and India.

However, there has been scant regard for the aptitude of students applying for admission and almost no checks to regulate the mushrooming growth of private education providers exploiting vulnerable students, largely from Asian countries, seeking foreign exposure.

Australia has attracted bright Indian students in its Masters and Doctorate courses offered by premier Australian universities. In 2008, Indians accounted for 17.3 per cent of all overseas students. However, Australia is not attracting the crème de la crème of Indian students.

Why would an Indian student from a village spend A$30,000 to do a course in hairdressing, a profession which doesn’t hold much appeal in today’s globalised India? While speaking with students enrolled in the many Vocational Education and Training (VET) courses, this writer discovered that a majority of them had little or almost no interest in the course they were pursuing.

Over 40 per cent of all overseas Indian students in Australia are from Punjab. They mostly enroll in Hospitality & Services, which includes commercial cookery, hospitality and hairdressing courses. At one institute in Melbourne, a class of horticulture had three-fourths of the students from the same village in the northern state of Punjab. Their parents had mortgaged or sold ancestral lands, to send their sons to study in Australia. But each of them was aware that their diploma had no value back home when it came to fast tracking the long job queues.

They were enrolled in this course to get more points towards a permanent residence (PR) visa in a points-tested migration programme.

Those with an Australian qualification can qualify for a permanent visa after a two-year course, without any work experience or any intention to work in the field of study.

Someone applying for permanent residency under the skilled migration program needs to show acceptable qualifications and full-time skilled employment for a year. That is why there is often no link between the courses of study and career path these students choose once they get a permanent residence visa. An estimated 70 per cent of Indian students migrate; many use Australia as a leaping pad to go to the United States.

Many of these students come from the quiet, protected confines of their rural homes to a city in a completely alien land. Hence, they seek protection by clinging together, forming ghettoes in low-income suburbs blighted by a high crime rate.

They work late hours in low-paying jobs in offices, petrol pumps, fast food joints and departmental stores to pay for their living expenses and repay hefty bank loans taken to fund their education abroad.

They usually have no option but to take public transport and walk on poorly-lit streets to reach home late at night after work. Like any student, they carry mobile phones, iPods, laptops, cash and sometimes wear jewelery. Wouldn’t they be vulnerable to drug addicts and alcohol-fueled violence in any city in the world at that hour?

In 2007-08, there were 36,765 victims of crimes such as robberies and assaults. Of these, 24,260 were Caucasian victims and 1,447 were people of Indian origin, according to Victoria police sources.

Indian students are not singled out, but they are more vulnerable than the 200,000-strong Indian Diaspora that has integrated well into the mainstream. It is no longer about being Black or White considering over 200 nationalities today call Australia home.

Most students do not report cases. As many as 70 per cent cases – primarily of assaults and robbery — go unreported, out of fear of damaging their prospects of getting a Permanent Residence Visa. There is also perceived police apathy. The Australian Federal Police has barely earned its name back after the battering it received during the former alleged terrorist-suspect Muhammad Haneef’s saga.

Following the recent spate of attacks, foreign students held rallies in Sydney and Melbourne and began forming vigilante groups to protect themselves. The prime ministers of both countries called for calm, urging students to focus on their education.

Until 2004 higher education was the main aim of Indian students here. They made up 8 per cent of total university enrolments that year, and fewer than 4000 Indians were enrolled in the VET sector. But there are 52,000 Indians in the sector today. Australia’s English language schools have 16,000 Indians, a twelve-fold increase in five years.

In recent years, many over-crowded, ill-equipped, make-shift private education providers have sprung up. The Immigration Department has said that it was investigating 23 Victorian and five New South Wales state education institutions in April for possible breaches of immigration laws. “We do have some fraud and we do have some [shady] operators. I think some of the colleges are more focused on trying to sell a visa and their education outcomes are not as good as they should be,” Immigration Minister Chris Evans has said.

During 2007-08, there were 87,145 active student visa holders from India, a substantial increase from 58,268 in 2006-07. As many as 502 Indian students had their visas cancelled in 2007-08. Violations of immigration laws — like submitting falsified documentation and visa overstaying — have been commonplace.

It is about time both governments cracked down on this mushrooming breed of fraudulent education providers, immigration agents, and employers. They are the ones really to blame. It is vital to clean up the system to ensure the quest for high-quality education is not tarnished by criminals.

However, the skewed Indian media coverage of the recent attacks offers a simplistic racial motive to the attacks, which is only alienating the Indian community in Australia. As a result, the “well settled, high achieving” Indian Diaspora in Australia is more vulnerable than ever to a backlash from miscreants.

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