From July 1 onwards, the Australian Government will provide 3000 work visas for Indian students without any sponsorship for eight years. This is under the Mobility Arrangement for Talented Early-professionals Scheme. Professionals from the fields of STEM including Engineering, IT and Communication Technology, AI, Fintech, renewable energy, and mining are primarily eligible under this scheme.
This scheme is a temporary visa programme by Australia to attract more young and skilled workers from India – and offers a quicker mobility pathway to early career professionals to live in Australia.
Furthermore, the Australian Government also hopes to retain Indian Students studying in Australian Tertiary Education Institutions, by re-introducing the 48-hour-per-15-day work limit, and granting a two-year extension on their Temporary Graduate Visas.
To illustrate, the post-study work rights for select bachelor degrees would be increased from two to four years, for master’s degrees, the extension is from three to five years and four to six years for all doctoral qualifications.
Ankur Dhawan, President of upGrad Abroad, explains what these new norms could mean for Indian students:
Australia has been a very popular study-abroad destination for Indian students. Many Indian students go there for high-quality institutions. If we look at most of the Australian institutions, they rank very high on Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) Ranking as well as Times Higher Education (THE) Rankings.
Till now, if you are a bachelor’s student in Australia, you have been given only two years of post-study/work visa. And if you were studying in a regional area, you have been given four years of post-study/work visa.
Recently, the Australian government improved that number and gave additional two years to all the students who are pursuing bachelor’s in Australia. So, that brought the whole number of years they can stay in Australia without looking for visa sponsorship to six years.
Now, recent changes include the fact that Australia is allowing students from India who have specialised degrees in Engineering, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Agriculture Technology to also stay for two more years in the country without a visa sponsorship for work. This can extend up to eight years for bachelor students.
So, let’s say a student who comes to Australia at the age of 18 to pursue their bachelor’s will be completing the course when they are 21 or 22 years old, depending on the course they pick, he will have six years directly from the government to study and to work post completion of his studies.
And with MATES, they will get additional two years, so that they can stay there till they are 29 or 30 years old. And they can also opt for Australian PR. So it makes it very attractive for bachelor students to study and pursue their courses in Australia.