Finally, an Indian student has been killed in Australia, and instead of taking responsibility for its utter negligence to protect Indian students from obviously racial attacks for nearly a year, Australian officials are behaving a lot like that country’s bad cricketers – unyielding, unrepentant and boorish.

One hardly expected a mea culpa from them for longstanding inaction and failure to accept racial bias in most, if not all, of the attacks. Yet, the official reaction is shocking. Its leaders steadfastly deny racial discrimination, try to pass off Nitin Garg’s killing as just another big city murder, and even warn the Indian government not to raise hysteria. For any country, much less one in the developed world with multicultural pretensions, it’s an undistinguished response to a humanitarian situation.

What bothers me is this: why on earth do so many Indian students go to study in Australia?

No student who goes to Australia is doing a favour either to himself or to India. That is because the quality of education in that country is far from uplifting. In fact, it doesn’t even match the standards of many Indian colleges and universities.

Most students can do a lot better with their money, and time, if they were to go to many smaller universities in the US, England or Canada. These provide a far superior education than the ones in Australia, and many may be cheaper too, because they charge relatively modest fees and living costs are lower in the smaller towns where these are located.

I can understand the frustrations of earnest, and intelligent, students who cannot get admission at the hugely competitive institutions at home. We just don’t have that many colleges and universities as we have aspirations, and with government policy being what it is, things are not going to change soon. But that is no reason to despair and be taken in by Australian universities and colleges making presentations in Indian cities to lure students. In the days of the Internet, it is plain dumb to fall for such PR spin and not explore other lands for quality education. The US, for example, has thousands of small colleges and universities that don’t have the resources, or the need, to do a marketing blitz in India to attract students. 

Can we expect Indian students to turn this crisis in Australia into an opportunity to look elsewhere for better quality education?