Visas to study in Australian universities have become easier to obtain following months of record rejections, newly released Department of Home Affairs (DHA) statistics suggest, but the rebound appears to reflect a slump in processing rather than a turnaround in approvals.
Eighty-three per cent of the applications for higher education visas that were processed in April, after being lodged offshore, proved successful. This compared with approval rates of just 67 per cent in February and 59 per cent in March.
Around 7,400 visas were granted to offshore higher education applicants in April, up from 6,900 in March, even though almost 3,000 fewer applications were processed in April.
The main cause of the improved grant rate appears to be a slowdown in processing of applications from out-of-favour countries in the Indian subcontinent.
The number of Indian applications processed in April was 59 per cent lower than the monthly average in February and March, according to a Times Higher Education analysis of the data. Processing volumes from Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka were down by 67 per cent, 78 per cent and 87 per cent respectively, compared with the earlier months.
