Universities in Australia are waiting to see whether recruitment of overseas students has suffered a serious downturn after early figures showed a slump in enrolments. Official data for the year to February showed that the number of overseas students starting higher education courses fell by 8.9 per cent, The Australian reported, with enrolments from China, the key market, down 10.8 per cent. It looked like a “very worrying trend”, said Phil Honeywood, the executive director of the International Education Association of Australia. But he said that the picture would not be clear until the March figures were published because of differences in semester start dates. The February figures showed that enrolments from Malaysia fell by 16.4 per cent while those from Vietnam rose, by 3.6 per cent, as did those from India, by 28.4 per cent.
Source: Times Higher Education http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=419709&c=1