Aryanews- Fewer foreign students head to Australia to go on with studies, Immigration Department figures released Thursday show.
Student applications between July and October were down by almost a quarter compared to the same period in 2009. Applications from India fell by almost half.
The global financial crisis, a recent government crackdown on back-street diploma factories and a rise in assaults on foreign students have combined to wallop a sector that is the third-largest foreign exchange earner after coal and iron ore.
Immigration Department spokesman Sandi Logan said the fall in the number of visas awarded partly reflected tougher screening of applicants.
"We were also expecting that with the greater and more stringent integrity checks, the student visa application cohort from a number of countries would drop," he said.
The drop was most pronounced in applications from India, which now has 90,000 nationals studying in Australia, some of whom say they are victims of racial abuse and even race-hate violence.
Nitin Garg, a 21-year-old accounting graduate, was stabbed to death Saturday while walking to his work at a fast-food
restaurant.
Police investigating the killing in a Melbourne park say it is too early to describe it as a hate crime but others have classed it alongside other assaults where racism was a factor.
Indian External Affairs Minister S M Krishna described the killing as a "heinous crime on humanity" and warned that it would harm Australia's reputation as a safe place to study. "It certainly will have some bearing on the bilateral ties between our two countries," Krishna said.
