Learning How to Work the Grey Zone: Issues of Legality and Illegality among Indian Students in Australia

Abstract

Australia is currently one of the biggest players in the world offering/selling education on a commercial basis. The export education industry is allegedly Australia’s third largest service export industry with an annual turnover close to 7.5 billion Australian dollars.1 At the end of 2006, there were nearly 350,000 international students enrolled across all educational sectors in Australia.2 For the past few years the two largest groups of students come from India and China. The majority of Indian students are observed to enrol in full-fee paying courses that either lead to diplomas in particular trades, or masters in particular fields (Birrell 2005; Baas 2006: 7). In total, Indian students spent 585 million Australian dollars on education in Australia in 2005. While studying there, they also spent money on housing, food, clothes and other necessities, making their total contribution to the economy a lot larger. As a result, international students have become crucial sources of income on which not only education providers have come to rely on quite heavily, but also on which quite a number of jobs depend now. Some even go so far as to value the export education industry currently at 15 billion Australian dollars.