India Surpasses China as Australia's Top Source of Student Visa Applicants

India is now the top source of international students applying for visas to Australia, surpassing China, which has steadily kept this position for years.

Preliminary data provided by Australia's Department of Home Affairs to SBS Punjabi show that a total number of 43,925 Indian students have filed a student visa for Australia in the last six months of 2022, which makes the country Australia’s top student visa market.

“We have a strong relationship with India, and they want our help to educate 500 million students by 2035 – here and in India,” Universities Australia chief executive Catarina Jackson said in a statement to SBS Punjabi.

In the same year, students from China submitted a total of 38,701 student visa applications for Australia, which is a decrease of 12.1 percent compared to the same period before the outbreak of the pandemic, in 2019, when 44,060 Chinese students applied, Erudera.com reports.

The data also show that China is the only country with a drop in the number of Australian student visas filed amongst its nationals, in the list of the top five market sources for student visas for Australia. Aside from India, the number of applications filed in the other three countries, and the increases, are as follows:

• 13.6 percent more applications filed in Nepal, from 16,193 to 18,405
• 36.1 percent more in Colombia, from 9,786 to 13,321
• 43.1 percent more in Philippines, from 8,301 to 11,879 – which makes it the country with the biggest increase marked among the those listed in the top five

Other data also show that while the percentage of Indian students has increased from 4.41 percent in 2002 to 16.46 percent in 2022, while the percentage of Chinese students in Australia has increased from 15.19 percent in 2002, up to 27.37 percent in 2012 and then dropped again to 26.85 percent in 2022.

The interest of Indian students to study in Australia has not been affected by the Coronavirus pandemic either, since as soon as the Australian government announced the reopening of borders for international students on November 22, 2021, and until March 18, 2022, there have been a number of 28,785 student visas lodged by Indian nationals.

Australia is one of the world’s top favorite study destinations. Statistics published by the Australian government's Department of Education show that between January 2021 and December 2021, the country hosted 5,706,226 international students.

An advocacy group focused on the environment and quality of life in Australia, called Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), had even claimed in December last year that the country was favoring international students more than domestic students.

The claims were based on a report by the Australian Population Research Institute, which had revealed that in 2020, in the field of Management and Commerce, the number of international students graduating in this field surpassed that of domestic students by almost 20,000, with 70,219 international students and 51,971 Australian students graduating in this field.

>> Nearly 600,000 International Students Attended Courses in Australia Last Year