Shutting shop

Collapse of private vocational colleges in the past year has left many Indian students high and dry

Shutting shop

Collapse of private vocational colleges in the past year has left many Indian students high and dry

The collapse of a number of private Australian vocational colleges over the past year is damaging the nation's image abroad, according to angry students, many of them Indian, who have been left high and dry with their visas at risk.

Hundreds of international students at Sterling College, a Sydney vocational institution, have expressed their anger at "dodgy" education providers and blamed the lack of industry regulation of vocational colleges for their plight.

A large proportion of the 500 enrolled students at the college, which operates out of Sydney's Central Business District and Brisbane and which offers courses in English, financial services and hospitality, are Indian.

When students at the Sydney campus arrived at the college on Tuesday they found they had been locked out and left with an uncertain future, despite government assurances that they would be allocated places with other education providers.

In the words of a newspaper, "The closure of Sterling has highlighted dubious business practices across Australia's lucrative overseas student industry".

The Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship has launched a crackdown on "providers of concern", and in Victoria alone, are auditing 17 "high risk" private colleges.

A 25-year old Indian business management student says he arrived at the college to find a notice on the door explaining that it had been placed in voluntary administration overnight.

"We've been left in the dark," he said. "In pitch black. There was nobody around, no one from the management to tell the crowd of students what was happening. Just the notice on the door. That was all."

A 29-year old Master of Science student said: "They've cheated us. And the Australian government has been asleep. They make a lot of money out of international students.

But they don't care what happens to us."

Meanwhile the Australian Council for Private Education has said it would ensure students did not suffer financially academically or in terms of immigration, as a result of the closure.

Foreign minister Stephen Smith insisted the government was taking action to stamp out abuses of the system.
"We want Australia to be a good place for students to come," he said on Wednesday.
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"Any of these abuses we, of course, won't tolerate, and don't tolerate."

However, according to a comment in The Australian newspaper: "Australia risks killing the goose that laid the golden egg.

"By failing to act decisively to protect their welfare and interests of overseas students, federal and state education authorities have allowed a debacle in the vocational training sector to tarnish the entire university system."

Overseas students are estimated to contribute A$ 15.5 billion to the economy. It is no longer considered the provider of reliable, if not, top-shelf, tuition in a safe destination.

The newspaper goes on to say: "The bad press about Australia's overseas student programme unscrupulous agents, violence, predatorial campuses will doubtless dampen demand for vocational courses acting as immigration conduits...

"As a direct consequence Australian higher education is in bad odour throughout Asia, if not further afield.

"If these universities respond to lower demand by reducing the quality of their overseas intake in order to maintain volume they risk further sullying our reputation. The debacle could yet turn into a disaster."

In a separate editorial, The Australian theorises that "the real issue is how far to go in decoupling immigration and education policy."

(Immigration and Citizenship minister Chris Evans suggested in New Delhi last week that immigration would be "decoupled" from education).

"What began as a safety issue for Indian students and the ratcheted up into alarming and unproven claims of racism has become something far more potentially damaging to Australia's reputation.

"In short, the federal and state governments face a crisis about the integrity not just of our private vocational education sector but also of our skilled migration programme," the editorial says.