Australia welcomes Indian students with open arms: Trade and investment commissioner

The cost of living in Sydney for an Indian student in shared accommodation, using public transport often, eating out occasionally, regularly working out and keeping personal hygiene, and going to the movies once a month would cost an average 727 Australian Dollar (AUD) a week, if calculated for a year. The same would reduce by about 100 AUD per week for all other cities, except Canberra,as this reporter learns during a visit to ‘Festival of Australia’, organised by Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) here on Saturday (November 17).

Accompanied by their parents, about 300 students eager to learn how to study in Australia were at the Deccan Stateroom at a luxury hotel here, swiping interactive displays of a course-search tool, a career-matcher tool, English speaking test, cost-of-living calculator and a virtual reality zone, presenting almost an imaginative life in Australia.

‘Festival of Australia’ featured representatives from that country’s top 13 universities for students and parents to interact with; a culinary delight of Barramundi chips, potato and leek croquettes and Australian lamb seekh to savour; and its popular food and beverage products such as rice crackers, San Remo pasta and lasagna, Arnott’s biscuits and honey varieties among other stalls on education, retail and trade.

According to Trade and Investment Commissioner (Austrade) and Consul Commercial Vik Singh, Australia welcomes Indian students and families with its arms wide open, for education, culinary experience or tourism.

“It would be disproportionate to compare the U.S., where most Indians go to study, with Australia. It is over 1,400 universities versus 42, and our focus is on quality. Our three universities feature in the top-20 and nine in the top-100 universities globally,” he said.

In an exclusive interaction, Mr. Singh opined that ‘transnational education’ is the future of international education. The advantages with ‘Study Australia’ are many, such as dual degree awards by both Indian and Australian universities, Australian degree through its international campus in India or Australian school curriculum in India, besides student exchanges, semester abroad programmes and additional post-study work right for Indian students.

The current Indian student population in Australia is nearly 1.30 lakh, and Mr. Singh hoped that the annual intake would double in the next 12 months. He shared that many parents and their children in Mumbai and Hyderabad had been curious about courses in psychology, design, architecture in addition to the country’s popular courses in STEM, Artificial Intelligence and Marine Engineering. The Austrade festival stops in Bengaluru and Kochi next week.

The day-long programme on Saturday was packed with several cooking demonstrations of Australian dishes, a masterclass on natural disasters by author and inauguralJudith Neilson Chair in Architecture at the University of New South Wales, David Sanderson, and a panel discussion on studying abroad by Indian and Australian education leadership.

Published - November 16, 2024 10:49 pm IST