Indian student attacks: Australia’s lucrative education industry could take a hit
By ANISaturday, May 30, 2009
MELBOURNE - The recent attacks on Indian students in Melbourne could severely hit Australia’s lucrative education industry, agents in India who help arrange student placements have warned.
The assaults attracted a blaze of publicity in India for the third consecutive day yesterday, prompting some students and parents to re-evaluate plans to study in Australia.
Bubbly Johar, who runs Johar’s Education Centre, an education consultancy in New Delhi, said many parents of students considering education in Australia had contacted him because they are worried about safety.
“These attacks will definitely have an impact on the market because parents are calling me up and they are very concerned,” the Sydney Morning Herald quoted Johar, who is vice-president of the Association of Australian Education Representatives in India, as saying.
“The media coverage here is encouraging parents to rethink whether they should send their children to Australia for studies. We can’t assure them that they will be safe - it’s a very precarious situation for us,” Johar added.
Taxpayer-funded advertising in India that promotes Australian education services has been undermined by days of negative publicity about the violence.
Three English-language newspapers - Hindustan Times, The Times Of India and The Hindu - ran stories about recent student attacks on their front pages yesterday.
Education is Australia’s third-largest export earner behind coal and iron ore. The number of Indians studying in Australia has more than doubled since 2006 to 93,000. It is estimated this group contributed about two billion dollars to the economy last financial year.
But Arun Bhutani from AB Educational Avenues agency, which arranges for more than 1000 students a year to study in Australia, is bracing for a slump in demand.
Rupesh Duggal from Cambridge Immigration and Education Services in Punjab said: “There is a growing perception that people in Australia don’t like students from India and this is affecting our business.”
A team of Victorian police and fire brigade officers will arrive in India tomorrow to brief students bound for Australia on staying safe. (ANI)
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June 1, 2009: 5:33 am
It is with great trepidation that I see this racial abuse of Indian citizens. Kindly go through the following comments: 1. Australia earns a lot from Indian and students from other countries. Please go through the following data, taken from Oz websites “Students spent …. $6.4 billion, on education …It is estimated to have generated just over 122,000 FTE positions in the Australian economy in 2007-08, with 33,482 of these being in the education sector. Total student related expenditure (spending by students and visiting friends and relatives) generates a total of 126,240 FTE positions” (http://globalhighered.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/theaustralianeducationsectorandtheeconomiccontributionofinternationalstudents-2461.pdf) Before any of you people start shouting saying that you don’t care less, pl understand the difference between what is just and sensible and what is plain pig headedness. About 126, 240 full time equivalent jobs are at stake here. Aussie people work these jobs, with families and kids to support. In this recession time, these jobs mean survival or death for an Aussie parent. 2. Supporting the drug addicts who stab and steal and who unfortunately are Aussie citizens is not morally justified and this is not being patriotic. 3. It does not make sense to jeopardise these jobs, all because some drugged and boozed Aussie teens mug hard working students from other nations and who have come to study. 4. The Indian students protested en-masse, it was a non violent protest. This is the way of Indians, non violence, as taught by Mahatma Ghandhi. Why should Aussie hate groups feel angry at this ‘massive display of power’. 5. The Indian kids will go to other countries for studies and this can happen as early by July, when the new term opens. Once they are gone, it will take a few decades to get them back. I humbly request Oz citizens and their collective conscience to do what is just and correct by supporting the Indian students. Regards, |
Shashi Kadapa