Students with the desire to pursue their higher education in Australia are required to pay 38,516 US dollars a year, making Australia the most expensive study abroad nation for students with a plan to study overseas. Despite this factor, the country is still one of the most favorite destinations for the international students, something that has been attributed to the ongoing fall of the Australian dollar and the improved process of processing visa. This is according to a research that was conducted HSBC, a worldwide banking giant that is based in the United Kingdom.
The research revealed that the average fee for the international students in Australia is 25,375 US dollars per year and the average living cost is 13,410 US dollars which brings about a total cost that is about 3,000 US dollars more expensive than the United States and 8,000 US dollars higher than in the United Kingdom. The HSBC’s Retail Banking and Wealth management head, Graham Heunis, said that the Australian dollar and the strong Australian economy were the factors that had maintained the cost of studying in Australia highly relative when compared to the other countries. He further said that even though the Australian economy had experienced a higher growth rate than the rest of the western countries, this growth had led to the higher currency hence placing a strain of the competitiveness of their exports which included the education.
From the report, USA was named the 2nd most expensive country for the international students with the average university fee cost being 25,226 US dollars per year and the cost of living being 10,479 US dollars leading to an annual total cost of 35,705 US dollars for the overseas students. The international students studying in the Ivy League institutions could however pay over 67% above this amount with the average annual total cost of studying there reaching up to 58,760 dollars per year.
United Kingdom was named the 3rd most expensive country to study in by the international students with the total annual university fee of 19,921 US dollars and an average living cost of 10,177 US dollars. However, the total cost for international students in Hong Kong, UAE and Singapore were all above 20,000 US dollars a year with the reason given for this being the fact that the cost of living in these countries is higher.
Germany was named the least expensive countries for students to study abroad among all the countries that were reviewed by the research. The average annual university fee for international students in Germany was 635 US dollars and the cost of living 5,650 bringing out an annual cost of 6,285 US dollars. This is a sixth the total cost of an international student studying in Australia. The countries that followed Australia, United States and United Kingdom in the most expensive nations to study abroad were;
– The United Arabs Emirates
– Canada
– Singapore
– Hong Kong
– Japan
– Russia
– China
– Taiwan
– Spain
– Germany