Indian students flocking to Australia
More than 100,000 students from India enrolled in Australian educational institutions last year – a significant 25 percent rise from 2017. With most of them joining the so-called Group of Eight (Go8) top Australian universities, UNSW, Sydney was one of the top destinations for Indian students. As Australia slowly becomes a preferred destination for students in India to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education -along with law, management and architecture - UNSW’s proactive India engagement is seeing larger numbers of high-achieving students from India going to it for under-graduate and post-graduate studies cutting across multiple disciplines.
In the 2018 QS World University Rankings, UNSW was among the top 50 institutions in the world. Of over 3,000 faculty members, half of them are from outside of Australia, making it a truly global university. UNSW is home to more than 52,000 students from over 130 countries, with Indians becoming the second largest student community after the Chinese.
According to Aayushi Pandey from Kolkata, a post-graduate from UNSW Business School,”solving problems through team-work made the learning experience unique. What was also extraordinary is that the career counselling started from the day I joined and not when I was about to complete my studies.”
Enrolments in undergraduate programmes at UNSW are rising rapidly because of India’s supply-demand gap. According to latest Indian government estimates, to meet the 30 per cent gross enrolment ratio target by 2020, India needs to create 1,000 new universities, 40,000 new polytechnics and one million new faculty.
Laurie Pearcey, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International) at UNSW, said India is an important and an obvious partner for the university to focus on. UNSW opened its India Centre in New Delhi in July last year as part of its efforts to build a strong presence in the country and strengthen IndiaAustralia relations. It is headed by former Indian Ambassador Amit Dasgupta.
When the university launched its India strategy three years ago it had around 300 Indian students. “Today, we have close to 1,200, and we see that growth set to intensify. We intend to have 4,500 Indian students by 2025,” said Pearcey.