Australia cancels 10,000 student visas

Australia's Department of Immigration and Citizenship has revoked over 10,000 student visas in the last financial year. The majority of these visas were cancelled because students failed to comply with the requirements of their courses.

A DIAC spokesman told The Age newspaper that over 3,000 visas were cancelled because the holders were not genuine students. Two were cancelled on character grounds and 15 were cancelled because the holder provided bogus evidence in support of their claim. The remaining 7,000 visas were cancelled because students failed to comply with the requirements of their course.

Australia, like the UK, Canada, and the US has a large 'export education' industry. DIAC says that 461,477 international students enrolled in Australian educational establishments in the year to August. This figure includes universities, language schools and high school. Though the figure is high, it is a reduction of 7.6% on the previous year's figure.

The Australian export education market was worth AUS$16.3bn per annum in 2011/12. However, the secretary general of the International Association of Universities, Eva Egron-Polak, said that Australia is facing increasing competition for students not only from the established export education providers such as the UK, the US and Canada but also from Asian countries such as China and Malaysia.

Ms Egron-Polak said that there are now as many non-Chinese students studying in China as there are Chinese students studying abroad.

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