Indian students are restricted at 5 Australian universities due to an increase in fraud applications

Australia is on track to have the highest annual inflow of Indian students ever, surpassing the previous record of 75,000 set in 2019

Indian students are restricted at 5 Australian universities due to an increase in fraud applications.Due to an increase in fraudulent applications, 5 Australian universities have restrictions on accepting Indian students.

Melbourne: In response to an increase in fraudulent applications from South Asia seeking to work in this country—not study—at least five Australian universities have placed bans or restrictions on students from some Indian states, according to a media report.Australia is on track to have the highest annual inflow of Indian students ever, surpassing the previous record of 75,000 set in 2019.

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The integrity of Australia’s immigration system and the long-term effects on the country’s lucrative international education market have come under scrutiny as a result of the current surge, lawmakers and the education sector have expressed concern, according to a Tuesday article in The Sydney Morning Herald.

According to Jon Chew of the international education company Navitas, “the volume of students arriving has come back much stronger than anyone was expecting.””We knew there would be a lot of pent-up demand, but there has also been a surge in non-genuine students,” Chew was reportedly quoted as saying.

Universities are putting restrictions in place to avoid having their “risk rating” reduced because many applications are deemed by universities to not meet Australian visa requirements that they are a “genuine temporary entrant” coming only for education.

Emails from Victoria University, Edith Cowan University, the University of Wollongong, Torrens University, and agents working for Southern Cross University were obtained as part of an investigation by The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald newspapers. These emails demonstrate the crackdown on applications from Indian students.

Universities with restricted access to certain Indian states are worried that Home Affairs will limit their ability to expedite student visas due to the high number of applicants who actually want to work in Australia rather than study there.

Punjab and Haryana applicants from India were completely barred from applying to Edith Cowan University in Perth in February. In March, Victoria University tightened its restrictions on student applications from eight Indian states, including Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat.

These restrictions were implemented only a few days after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited India, in part to celebrate Australia’s educational ties and to announce a new agreement with Australian universities and colleges that would, in his words, herald “the most comprehensive and ambitious arrangement agreed to by India with any country”.

Importantly, the agreement called for the “mutual recognition of qualifications between Australia and India,” which will ease university travel to either nation.

Students from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Lebanon, Mongolia, Nigeria, and “other countries deemed a risk (of students not being a genuine temporary entrant) by the Department of Home Affairs” were subject to stricter requirements for their “genuine temporary entrant” test in March at the University of Wollongong.

After telling The Times Higher Education in March that it was only considering “very strong” applications from Gujarat, Haryana, and Punjab, Adelaide’s Torrens University said in a statement that it was “now looking carefully at each area where our applications come from.