Australia eases visa laws for Indian, Chinese students

March 22, 2014

Australia_visa_lawsMelbourne, Mar 22: In a significant reform of the immigration laws affecting international students, Australia has eased the financial requirements for the visa applicants from "high risk" countries like India, China and Pakistan.

International students from the so-called high risk countries would not be assessed according to the stringent Assessment Level 4 and 5 criteria now as they have been removed. The changes have been made to implement the recommendations made by the a 'Review of the Student Visa Assessment Level Framework 2013' and would come into effect from March 22.

"This is certainly good news, especially for Indian students who can now realise their dream of getting quality education in Australia," says a Melbourne-based education and immigration consultant Jag Khairra.

"The change in assessment levels for countries like India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan will help boost number of students from these countries," he opined.

The direct implication of the March 22 changes would be that the international students from countries like India, China and Pakistan would have to show lesser amount of money in order to gain entry to Australia. These students would be now be required to provide evidence of funds for 12 months' study in Australia instead of 18 months.

"Great news for students from India who will now show half the funds for diploma-level courses than before," said a Sydney-based vocational college owner, Moninder Singh, in a communique to IANS.

"This would mean students from countries like India and Pakistan would be able to apply for a student visa with up to A$20,000 (approximately Rs.1.1 million) less in the bank," Moninder Singh added.

This announcement is likely to be welcomed by the Vocational Education and Training (VET) and English Language Intensive Courses for Overseas Students (ELICOS) sector institutes who have been affected by a significant downturn in the number of international student enrolments.

"The VET sector, which has been struggling from the last three-four years, shall see the revival in the education industry," Khairra said while talking to IANS.

The Australian VET sector providers experienced a dramatic drop in the number of enrolments from India after the alleged racist attacks on south Asian students in 2009. The plummeting graph became much worse as the Labour government decided to tighten the visa laws for students from higher Assessment Level countries (e.g. India, China, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, etc.) studying in the VET institutes.

Even before the latest reforms, Australian has been gaining traction as a favoured destination for Indian students wishing to study overseas. The overall number of Indians applying for Australian student visa has experienced a dramatic increase (115 percent) in the past one year or so. The visa grants from India has also gone up in three figures.

Even though the number of Indian students getting Australian visa is very small compared to the pre-2009 figures, the South Asian country continues to be the second-largest source country for international student enrolments in Australia.

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Agencies
July 3,2020

New Delhi, Jul 3: The Delhi High Court on Friday refused to entertain a plea challenging Karnataka government's decision to impose a 25 percent domicile reservation in the National Law School of India University in Bengaluru.

A division bench of Justice Hima Kohli and Justice Subramonium Prasad observed that the impugned law is passed by the State of Karnataka, and the respondent university is also situated in Karnataka.

The court granted liberty to the petitioner to move the appropriate forum with their grievances.

The Karnataka Assembly had passed the National Law School of India (Amendment) Act, 2020 in March this year, which provided a 25 per cent horizontal reservation for students of Karnataka in the NLSIU.

The High Court observed that the main contesting parties in the present case were the NLSIU and the Karnataka Government. As the court did not show any interest in entertaining the plea, the petitioner withdrew the plea.

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Media Release
March 3,2020

Mumbai, March 3: Mumbai-based Ed tech startup Caymus Tech Ventures has announced inclusion of courses and programs from Harvard Business School, Chicago Booth, Harvard Kennedy School, Harappa Education, The Wharton School, and Stanford Online.

Lore.online users can now discover, compare, and enroll in both online and offline courses and programs including the following:

●  HBS online programs such as Business Analytics, Management Essentials, and Disruptive Strategy.

●  Select courses from the Harappa Habits framework such as Writing Proficiently, Managing Teamwork, and Negotiating Wisely.

●  The Wharton School and Chicago Booth offline executive education offerings, delivered in an face-to-face format, and that touch on topics such as Global Strategic Leadership, Private Equity and Digital Marketing for Executives.

Emerging leaders can tap these offerings to build skills to complement their formal education and experienced professionals can leverage them to hone new age skills required to manage a younger, more globally aware workforce.

Kavita Mehta, Founder CEO, Caymus Tech, says, “Giving our learners the best-fit options has always been our driving factor, which is why we are excited to announce that learners can now access Harvard Business School's highly coveted online programs on Lore and avail quality learning options from anywhere in the world.”

“We are continuously adding quality course providers like INSEAD and Stanford, whose select courses are also live on the platform”, she adds.

Lore.online has also integrated an assessment system in their Learning Pathways, where after undertaking each course, a report is generated which outlines learners technical and non-technical strengths and weaknesses. The platform now also shows open jobs for which a learner can also apply.

Caymus’ enterprise platform LoreForTeams, which was rolled out in Nov 2019, has been updated with additional features.

The new look now comes with a dashboard, new UI for Lore-curated learning lists, discussion features and a personalised learning feed. LoreForTeams, a learning experience platform (LXP), is aimed at working professionals in mid size companies. By adding the LoreForTeams functionality layer, Caymus aims to offer a revolutionary platform for skilling. This segment is seeing tremendous growth as more working professionals look for learning options to upskill themselves and stay relevant in shifting employment and business environments. The global demand for such platforms is north of $200 billion and in India, demand is nascent yet growing and expected to reach $10 billion by 2025.

Kavita Mehta, Founder CEO, Caymus Tech, says, “We heard what our customers and users were telling us. They want a real time view of what their teams are learning, a two way feedback system, and a more focused curation of learning options. Thus, we decided to add these features in LoreForTeams platform so that learning never stops and working professionals continuously find relevant courses to upskill themselves. Our vision is to democratize learning so that everyone has equal access to the best options out there.”

About Caymus Tech Ventures

Caymus Technology Ventures (Caymus) is a Mumbai-based ed-tech start-up focused on bridging the massive skill gap in the global workforce. The Company was founded in 2018 by Kavita Mehta, who earlier led Asia’s leading education consultancy. Caymus, with its expansive, integrated, and holistic perspective, believes in driving empowerment on the bedrock of education, skills, and technology. The Company‘s robust machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) powered platforms help recent graduates and experienced individuals identify targeted opportunities for personal and professional development.

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Media Release
January 8,2020

Mangaluru, Jan 8: The centenary year of St. Agnes College got off to a grand start on January 3, 2020 with a day of commemoration that involved staff, students, alumni and benefactors. The college is all set to celebrate its centenary with the community of Mangaluru on January 10, 2020 from 9.30 a.m. to 6.30 p.m with a daylong festival – Knowledge Factory. It will be held at the newly inaugurated air-conditioned auditorium with over 1000 attendees expected to be present. 

KNOWLEDGE FACTORY is the first of the five mega centenary programmes that St. Agnes College has envisaged.  The Promise Foundation and niiti Consulting – two organisations headquartered in the national capital under the mentorship of veteran journalist Madhavan Narayan are collaborating with the college to bring this event to Mangaluru for the first time.  A dozen icons will share the stage throughout the day and bring forth their thoughts and ideas enabling a culture of learning through fire-side chats and keynotes. 

The speakers include Lisa Ray, Indo-Canadian Actor and Author; Sunil Buch, Director, Live Nation; Dipannita Sharma, Actor and Supermodel; Kriti Tula, Co-Founder and Creative Director, Doodlage; Nandini Srikar, Singer and Composer; Prakash Belawadi, Movie and Theatre Actor,  Manasi Paresh Kumar, Senior Journalist; Swati Pande, Co-Founder and CEO, Arboreal; Anuradha Kedia Parekh, Co-Founder, The Better India; Arokiaswamy Velumani, Founder and Chairman, Thyrocare Technologies; Heena Sidhu, the former world  number 1 pistol shooter. The event anchor will be the celebrity news reader Rini Simon Khanna who has been anchoring the event since its first edition in 2017.

Gaurava Yadav, a well-known quiz master will conduct a quiz focussed on History.  Based on a written prelims that will take place at 8.15 am in the designated room, four teams of two members each will compete in the finals at 4.45 pm. The winning team will receive a prize of INR 30,000 and the runner up team will receive INR.20,000/-    

The event is put together by social entrepreneurs - Meena Vadiyanathan and Amith Prabhu (who is of Mangalorean origin). All who desire to attend the event and participate in the quiz may buy donor passes costing Rs 500/- per head which includes lunch.  Sale of donor passes will close on the 8th. The college cordially invites the community of Mangaluru to join hands with it in making this programme a great success. 

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