With release of the DIBP 2015-16 statistics on student visas, we can foresee a flattening in student numbers over 2016-17. The growth in student numbers is largely due to declined refusal rate for India and Nepal.

Now that the full year (July-June) stats are released, there is a modest growth in student visas for India while a significant growth for Nepal. The increase in student visa grants from Nepal looks significant but that is largely due to significantly reduced refusal rate. The visa grant rate for Nepal for students outside of Australia jumped up from 69% to 88%.

I do believe that the coming months will see the plateau emerge in student visa numbers as there are not too many reasons for the numbers to keep shooting up. Nepal visa grant % can’t go up further. Indian student visa grant % may improve a little with SSVF though. I however expect the overall numbers from India to stabilise around 20,000 while that from Nepal will settle around 7000. This is more reasonable too and I believe we are at the highest point for the curve.

Full report can be found on this link.