MELBOURNE: Overseas student enrolments in Australian universities have taken a serious dive following a spate of attacks on Indian students here and the introduction of new amended immigration programme by the government.

There are now calls for a body to represent the interests of the entire private education sector of Australia to help repair the damage.

Andrew Smith, from the Australian Council for Private Education and Training, said there has been a drop of between 40 and 50 per cent in applications from South Asian countries, particularly India, ABC report said on Saturday.

“We’ve seen some fall away from the China market which is another key market but we are also seeing some increases in other markets and we expected over the course of this year, numbers overall will actually probably hold about the same,” he said

“There just won’t be anything like the rates of growth we’ve experienced in recent years,” he said.

However, he said government’s changes to the skilled migration program are likely stunt growth in the education market. “There was a further suite of changes announced last week,” he said.

“The disappointing thing from our point of view was that those changes rely on a specialised occupation list being developing and that list is still several months away from being developed and released, which makes it very hard for businesses to plan, makes it very hard for prospective students to know what their options might be,” Smith said.

Industry and government are desperate to restore confidence in Australia as a safe place for quality education.

Rod Jones from the Navitas education provider said that while there is plenty of goodwill, he feared the effort to repair Australia’s reputation is uncoordinated and a new umbrella body should be set up for it.

“It is the third or fourth largest export industry for this country and it seems really quite amazing that there is not a body that’s looking to try and coordinate from a government perspective, the best possible outcome for this country in terms of delivering both additional export dollars but taking a view about the long-term future and strategy of how we should best manage this industry as we move forward,” he said.

Smith said it could be something along the lines of Tourism Australia.

“This is a significant industry – it needs the support and it needs the strategic approach that will see us take this industry to the next step,” he said.