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Dahlia Rera Oktasiani landed in Australia in November last year, eager to begin studying her project development course at a business college in Sydney.
But the 33-year-old student from Bali has had a tough time adjusting to life here, even though she previously lived abroad while studying in the US.
When she first arrived in Australia, Ms Oktasiani paid $110 a week for a room shared between two, but now the rent has increased to $185.
"My rent is increasing every week or two. I am now doing two jobs," she said.
"I need to be creative to find cheap meals by cooking at home, or find special promotions in the market."
She's one of many international students feeling the pinch due to Australia's cost of living crisis and rising inflation.
Ms Oktasiani worked in Bali during the pandemic and managed to save some money for her studies.
But she has drawn on her savings to cover her accommodation and food, and Ms Oktasiani said she needed to budget carefully.
In 2020, then prime minister Scott Morrison told international students that they should go home if they couldn't support themselves in Australia during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2022, his government lifted the 40-hour per fortnight work cap to help alleviate labour shortages, meaning international students like Ms Oktasiani can now work longer hours than previous cohorts.
But the arrangement will end in June this year, and the number of hours a student visa holder can work will again be restricted to 20 hours per week.
"At the moment I am working around 40 hours per week, and that is barely enough to cover all my living expenses," she said.
Her main concern is the uncertain economic situation in Australia and how that will influence the cost of living in the coming months.
"I need to save, and also prepare myself with some buffer, because I don't know what is going to happen," she said.
"Prices could go up by 10 per cent, 20 per cent. Who knows?"
Ms Oktasiani wants more affordable housing available to help international students.
She heard from an acquaintance that they were sharing a room with two other people, in a three-bedroom house shared by 12 students.
According to a survey by the University of Technology Sydney in 2019, several international students had resorted to "hot-bedding", where their bed is only available for some hours of the day or night so others can sleep in them.
The survey, using a sample size of 7,000 students (out of around 750,000 international students in Sydney and Melbourne at the time), estimated that around 3 per cent, or more than 200 students, rented beds for several hours a day.
'It's a very tiring situation'
In Adelaide, Kevin Vuong and his twin brother Nick are fortunate with their accommodation — they're living with their uncle's family and paying rent while they study at the University of South Australia.
The twins, 20, come from Ho Chi Minh City but have been in Australia for the past five years, after moving here for high school.
While their accommodation costs are lower than the average international student, they still need to pay for food and private medical insurance.
"We have to pay for private health care as international students are not covered by Medicare," Mr Vuong said.
Mr Vuong recently returned from visiting his family in Vietnam — his first trip home since the pandemic — and he dreams of owning his own business one day.
He was working as a trolley collector at a supermarket, but is now looking for a different job to fit with his higher study load.
"Because I am in the second year of uni, I need to make sure I have the time to study," he said.
At the same time, Mr Vuong is eager to help alleviate the financial burden for his parents, who have a pottery business back in Vietnam and are also supporting their 15-year-old daughter.
The twins' annual university tuition fees are around $30,000 each, so it will cost the family $180,000 over three years.
"Currently my parents are still able to support us, but they are struggling now as the economic situation back in Vietnam has still not fully recovered because of COVID," he said.
"It's quite difficult for my parents."
In Australia, his life is a cycle of work and study, without much time to relax or socialise.
"It's a very tiring situation. You just study. If you are not studying, you are working," he said.
"If you don't work, you need to study. After you finish everything, you go back home tired, go to bed, sleep. The next day you are going to repeat again."
'I need to get a job now'
A social life is the furthest thing from Sanchit Jain's mind at the moment.
Having arrived from India in July last year after studying one semester online, the 27-year-old University of Melbourne student now needs to find a job soon to survive.
Mr Jain has taken a loan in India for about $35,000 to study a master's degree in public administration.
"I don't have resources to pay for my study, so that's why I took a loan and I am supposed to start paying my loan as I finish my study at the end of 2023," he said.
He had budgeted to pay around $200-300 weekly for rental accommodation, but is now paying around $460.
Rental prices have risen around 30 per cent in the past year in some cases, with Domain reporting the median rent for a Melbourne CBD apartment hit $480 per week.
The Financial Review, citing SQM Research, reported weekly asking rents for houses and units were $744 in Sydney, $549 in Melbourne, and $514 in Adelaide.
Mr Jain briefly resorted to couch-surfing for a week when he could not find affordable housing after moving out of a previous rental.
"I could not stay in an Airbnb because I don't have money to pay that kind of budget, so I stayed with different people for six days."
The job situation, especially for international students, could become tougher as more Chinese students who previously were studying online now must return to Australia for face-to-face classes.
Despite the difficult economic situation, Mr Jain was glad to be studying in Melbourne, saying he got more out of in-person classes.
But he was also struggling to find healthy meal options on campus within his budget.
"The most disappointing thing for me so far is that I couldn't find a decent meal at the university with a reasonable price," he said.
Student welfare should be a 'top priority'
Universities Australia chief executive Catriona Jackson said she was encouraged to see international students steadily returning to Australia since borders re-opened more than 12 months ago.
But she said she also recognised the challenges they face in settling here.
"Student welfare is a top priority for universities, and we strongly encourage anyone who is struggling to reach out to their institution for assistance," she said.
She said there are a range of support services available to assist students who are experiencing academic, financial or personal pressures.
"We will continue to work closely with the government to ensure students from here and abroad have the opportunity to reap the benefits of an Australian university education," she said.
Andrew Deucher, an educational researcher from the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, said the profile of international students coming to Australia had shifted over time.
"In the early days of student mobility to Australia in the 90s and early 2000s, it was generally only quite privileged people coming from tier one cities, especially from China and places like that," Dr Deucher said.
"Nowadays we see that that's changing — we get a more diverse set of countries, but also more diversity of students within those countries.
"When people are coming from different backgrounds, clearly they might be in a different position to navigate hardships when they're here."
He said problems that some international students are dealing with are not dissimilar to what Australians are experiencing, but they can face additional hurdles if English isn't their first language and if they were looking for a share-house in a new country and culture.
Dr Deuchar said his research with international students over many years showed that the most crucial support they get — whether it was economic help, social support or emotional support — came from each other.
"The most profound and effective supports they get come from other international students," he said.
An example was WhatsApp groups, where people could find and share information quickly among peer groups.
"What institutions need to consider is not how they can reinvent the wheel and create new supports … but how they can learn from international students themselves and create interventions which nurture the strategies that they're already doing."
Extending the welcome mat
All the students contacted by the ABC said they felt as if they were being used to fill the gap in the job market by coming to study in Australia, but also said the education system here was of a higher quality than their own respective countries.
"International students are cash cows for them. The school fees are three or four times more expensive compared to the domestic students," Sanchit Jain said.
"[It's] give and take. I feel like I'm being used but at the same time I came here to study because the quality is better compared to my own country."
Kevin Vuong in Adelaide is hoping that universities and the government will consider lowering tuition fees and helping with medical costs.
Nancy Arthur, the dean of research for UniSA Business, has conducted extensive research on the employment transition of international students.
She said with more international students arriving, Australia must "extend the welcome mat" and not just treat them as commodities.
"We need to think beyond the recruitment of international students," she said.
"It's about the quality of their experiences while they're living and learning in the destination country, and what responsibilities those destination countries have to host them."
Professor Arthur said there should be more interaction between local and international students.
"We often think we have to travel to other countries to learn about diverse cultures," she said.
"Yet we have students working alongside each other while enrolled as university students. So it's a fantastic way for us to support the rich exchange."
A spokesperson for the Department of Education told the ABC that the Australian government warmly welcomes international students to study and said educational providers had responsibilities to support their health and wellbeing.
They added a cost of living estimator is available on the Study Australia website.
In relation to the relaxation of student visa work limits, the spokesperson referred to a media release from September.
"The number of hours will be subject to consultation with a view to striking the right balance between work and study," the press release said.
"The government continues to consider this matter and a further announcement will be made in due course," the spokesperson said.
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