Indo-Australian joint foray in education: Prof Davis

Brisbane, Mar 23: India and Australia will have many joint education ventures during the coming years following relaxation in foreign investment restrictions in the Indian educational sector that has encouraged Australian providers, according to Professor Glyn Davis, chairman of Australia's Group of Eight universities.

Prof Davis, who had come to India with Prime Minister John Howard's business party, told newsmen here yesterday that Indians perceived Australian universities as aggressive marketers in Asian countries.

He, however, expressed caution that the Indian universities felt that Australia should not look upon India as an educational market to be aggressively harvested. ''They want the relations on equal terms. They are determined that Australia won't exploit them,'' he said.

He said the Indian universities wanted investment in their own country rather than having their best students taken away to Australia.

He noted that two particular areas of education were good prospects for Australia in India. India was looking to Australia for vocational educational training, and had recently adopted the holus-bolus, Australia's framework for qualifications.

India also had great interest in postgraduate training provided by Australia, especially in business, IT, engineering and the professions.

Currently, India is Australia's second-largest education market, second only to China. Twenty-five thousand of the nearly 250,000 foreign students in Australia are from India.

UNI