Families in northern India are desperate to send their children to study in Australia, but many are falling victim to cruel scammers.
In the northern Indian states of Punjab and Haryana, sending young people abroad to study for a better life is celebrated with a giant mock airplane atop a building and a golden statue of a kangaroo, which It symbolizes that Australia is a preferred destination.
Families also give each other models of passenger planes to celebrate when a young person goes abroad to study.
However, those dreams are becoming harder to achieve as the Australian government takes steps to limit international student enrollment amid concerns that migration is getting out of control.
Starting next year, only 270,000 foreign students will be able to enter the country to obtain student visas, which will also allow their holders to work under a series of conditions.
The federal government has also more than doubled the student visa application fee to $1,600, which, even if denied, is non-refundable.
Applicants must also pass higher English proficiency requirements and stricter criteria to determine a student’s genuine status.
One of the reasons cited for tightening visa requirements is to address widespread fraud.
In northern India, families celebrate the decision to send their children abroad to study
A alphabet An investigation in northern India has uncovered fraudulent visa agents in that country, but has also raised questions about the legitimacy of Australian universities that foreign students name as their place of study.
Prinjal, a 19-year-old from Seedpur in Haryana, had intended to study a business diploma at Willows Institute, a private university in Adelaide, from July.
All the paperwork was being prepared by the migration agency World Visa Advisors, which was located in the northern city of Chandigarh.
However, when the promised visa did not materialize, Prinjal’s brother visited the World Visa Advisors office, only to find it empty and supposedly unoccupied for two weeks.
Prinjal came to the terrible conclusion that she was the victim of fraud and that her farmer father was in danger of losing his farm because he borrowed $13,000 to send his daughter to Australia.
“I just thought, ‘How can this happen to me?’ I felt like all my dreams had been shattered,” Prinjal told ABC.
In July, police said they had arrested staff at World Visa Advisors on suspicion of defrauding families of $1.2 million with the false promise of student visas.
Prinjal, 19, who lives in a village in northern India, said all his dreams had been shattered by scammers who falsely promised him a student visa to Australia.
Prinjal was trying to study a business diploma at Adelaide’s Willows Institute, but the private education provider had his registration to teach suspended earlier this year.
One police station in Chandigarh alone said it had identified 400 families who had been victims of visa fraud, netting fraudsters $4.5 million in the first half of 2024.
The ABC also investigated the Willows Institute in Adelaide, but on three occasions they sent journalists there – it was closed.
Willows also had a minimal online presence, with a website, a Facebook page with 20 followers and an Instagram account with no posts.
Vocational training watchdog the Australian Skills Quality Authority told the ABC was under audit after receiving a referral from the Department of the Interior in May last year.
His registration to teach was canceled in June this year “due to the severity of the issues identified and in order to mitigate the risk of further harm”.
The regulator received a complaint stating that Willows Institute “may not be genuine”.
Willows Institute director Dilpreet Singh insisted to the ABC in an email that Willows Institute was “legitimate.”
He said the company will fight to have the registration reinstated before the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
International student enrollment has risen from just over 520,000 to more than 810,000 in the past two years, resulting in poor-quality education providers trying to “make a quick buck” by gaming the system, Jason Clare said.
“That growth…has attracted people who are really here to work, not to study,” Mr Clare told the Australian Financial Review’s higher education summit.
“This has put the reputation of this industry under pressure, that’s a fact,” Mr Clare said.
Nearly 150 tertiary universities have already been closed for failing to provide evidence that they offered training to their students, while a further 140 “ghost universities” have been given warnings.
In one case, a university had not provided any training or assessment to students since 2020.
Skills Minister Andrew Giles said universities that had not been operating for the purpose of providing quality education had been axed and closed.
“The Albanian government is calling for an end to the errors and loopholes that have plagued the VET sector for too long,” he said.
“Under our government, there is no place for anyone who seeks to undermine the sector and exploit students.”