CANBERRA – The government of Australia rejected well over 50,000 applications for student visas from international students in three months only.
Latest data implies that the government is tightening the rules against student visas and from December to February this year, the government rejected 50,000 visa aspirants.
The approval rates are also not encouraging as stats imply that the approval rates fell to 82.8 percent, well below the 90 percent or higher rate recorded over recent decades. According to the government figures, there were 713,000 people on student visas in Australia in February this year.
Australia earns close to $50 billion from international education but the recent measures indicate that the government is set to discourage the entry of students.
The trend to discourage international students is gaining popularity as Canada and the UK have also introduced more restrictive policies to curtail growth in international student numbers in recent months.
The government of Canada has already announced to reduce the intake of students by 35 percent while the authorities in the United Kingdom have also banned students from bringing their dependents to the country.
Australia also recently made the English language requirement criteria strict for student and Graduate visas implying that the country also seeks students who are promising and are not merely using student visas as a springboard for permanent settlement.
The figures suggest that the students might have to look for options for study other than Australia with a catch that even the other options i.e. UK, Canada are also tightening the rules against international students.
