Australia is facing turmoil in its export education industry due to immigration changes, which may create opportunities for NZ providers.

Many of the people who  study overseas want to stay after they finish study. It’s usually a good deal, as graduates enter the workforce with the host country not having paid for any of their childhood, while the graduate will earn more than they would in their home country.

Periodically, though, the immigration criteria need to be adjusted as people enrol, and providers offer, according to demand. If the government doesn’t keep up, as seems to be the case in Australia, then major imbalances can occur – the Migration Occupation in Demand list grew from 19 occupations in 1999 to 106 in 2009. A column in The Age last week states that over the last eight years private vocational college enrolments have shifted from a third of university enrolments to level-pegging with them. The boom appears to be driven largely by immigration reasons – there’s a good analysis here. There are apparently 12,000 immigration applications from cooks, while only 36,000 cooks are employed in Australia!

The upshot is that we are likely to see many closures of private vocational colleges in Australia this year, which will affect many Indian students in particular (building on existing problems in that market). Combined with the GEOS Australia closure several weeks ago, Australia will take a big reputational hit that NZ could benefit from.

HT to TAFE Directors Australia.

Update: The Waikato Times ran a story this afternoon on Wintec’s and the University of Waikato’s response to Australia’s problems in India.