Sydney

Indian restaurants are busy in Ballarat, a 90 minutes drive north of Melbourne.Most customer comprise the hundreds of Indians studying at the town's universities.Around 100 or so Indian families have also made the archetypal Australian country town their home.

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         With fees for overseas students half the rate in Melbourne and Sydney,and living cost much lower than in Australia's two big conurbations,Ballarat is winning a bigger slice of a business that is now worth over Australian $5 billion to the company.

     Some 22,000 Indians were enrolled at Australian universities last year,25per cent more than in 2004,and up from just a couple of thusand five years ago.

      In the ranking for source countries,India came in second behind China,which sent 70,000 youngsters to get degrees in Australia -- a third more than in 2004.

      Ballarat,a town of 80,000 has positioned itself at what might be called the entry level of the higher education market.Its 600 foreign student are mostly after third degrees -- and a chance to set up home in a place like Ballarat.

       A recent study by Monash University's Michiel Baas found that three-quater of indians students who complete university courses in Australia apply and get permanent residency visas.

       "The most important reason they come to Australia is not because they rank Australia  universities very highly,but much more because they are attracted by the opinion of applying for permanent residency after graduation,"Baas said.

       Bob Birrell, also an academic at Melbourne's Monash,said "immigration-oriented" higher education had become an important new features at the less prestigious of the country's 38 universities.

     Australia's top-drawer universities are holding their own at the end of the market.

    Overall,Australia takes fourth place after the US,Britan and Germany.Australiann universities have set themselves a maximum of one in four students from abroad.