The Australian Strategy for Higher Education 2021–30 has recommended diversification of international student intake.
Many academics have also been calling for a diversification of migration away from China towards other countries.
India that makes up 21 per cent of international student entries into Australia has emerged as a potentially important source of students in the future.
However, Lowy Institutes’ recent study of Indian sentiment towards education showcases a decline in Australia.
The institute conducted a study that used AI-powered strategic market research techniques to measure public sentiment towards societal trends. They used a large English language data pool of all open-access Internet sources from India.
The aim was to find out what the Indians think about education in Australia and other key competitor countries to whom take up education services – the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.
According to the survey, “Indian interest in Australia as an education destination has worsened significantly since November 2020.”
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The Indian students sentiment shifted significantly towards dominant and strong negative, including emotions of strong dislike and anger and a reduction in expectation towards Australia as a destination for education.
“This signals that demand for Australia has undeniably waned, presenting a clear and present risk to the recovery of the Indian international student market in the coming year.”
The survey attribute this downturn in sentiment to:
- the ban on Indian Australian arrivals in late April 2021;
- a deep concern about Australians declining educational performance generally;
- concern about Australian education system including educational inequality between public and private, regional, remote and urban and policy and funding issues; and
- concern about wage theft that students believe has worsened since Covid-19.
As per the survey and reasons given for decline, it clearly shows that Indian international students are aware consumers of information about Australia.
It is a well-known fact that Indian students choose to study in Australia as they are highly interested in the nation as a migration destination.
So, these findings should be of concern to government officials, policy-makers, and senior management of universities who wish to retain the source of highly diversified and skilled migrants flow to Australia.