AUSTRALIA

Between July 1998 and April 1999, the Australian government granted visas to 95,000 international students.

The largest contingent of foreign students receiving visas to attend Australian institutions of higher education came from Indonesia, according to Australian immigration statistics. Most of these students are believed to be ethnic Chinese. A total of 15,000 visas were issued to Indonesian students, which is double the number granted to Japanese and Korean students, and more than half the number granted to students from Hong Kong.

The next largest contingent came from India (6,150 visas) followed by Malaysia (5,938), China (4,926), Britain (4,500), Thailand (4,400), Singapore (4,274) and Taiwan (3,916).

Visa applications from many countries are still down due to the aftershocks of the economic crisis that wreaked havoc on parts of Asia two years ago. The number of students coming from Korea, for example, fell by 35 percent this year, while student numbers from Malaysia and Singapore were both down by 10 percent.

But the sharp drop in visas issued to students from those three countries