Watching the child graduate with his first degree abroad is like watching the baton being passed in a relay. But will the child stay on abroad, or come home to a familiar lifestyle?

FOR the past three years, my son had been studying at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) for his degree in communications. Last week, on the auspicious day of 12.12.12, he received his scroll.

(Well done to him and a big thank you for all the congratulations we had received through my Facebook account).

The ceremony was held at the huge 55,000-capacity Docklands Stadium (formerly the Etihad Stadium) which usually houses Australian Football Rules games.

That night, RMIT gave away scrolls to more than 6,200 graduating students including over 100 PhDs.

It was, in my biased view, a grand affair but the truth is that it felt very much like a factory production of graduates.

According to the latest figures, as of June 30, there were 307,050 international student visa holders in Australia and about one quarter of these were from China and around 12% were from India. There are 19,000 Malaysian students Down Under.

By all accounts – especially walking up and down Swanston Street (the main happening place in Melbourne) – more than 8,000 of our students seem to be based in the capital of the Australian state of Victoria.

“It is as if I have never left Malaysia. It definitely does not seem as if I am studying overseas,” said my son as we chatted over our umpteenth-cup of coffee at one of the many great coffeeshops in Melbourne.

According to Australian Immigration, the number of foreign students are falling but not at a worrying pace. The number of applications by Malaysians to be students had fallen by some 3% up to July.

While people like my son blame the fall on the fact that there are just too many Malaysians already here, it cannot be denied that many look elsewhere to further their studies because it is now more difficult to “stay back” and settle down in Australia.

The Canberra government has decided to put more conditions for graduating students to apply for a bridging visa or a PR. In some cases, foreign students are even told to go back to their home country and apply from there.

However, it cannot be denied that despite the Australian economy doing well, the labour market is very soft. Most fresh graduates (discounting those who did medicine, accounting and law) are struggling to find a job that matches their degree.

King Wong, the son of a Hong Kong immigrant, studied to be a computer hardware engineer five years ago and today he makes a living as a junket organiser for a casino.

“The money is good. A friend of mine did find me a job in the US as a systems engineer but my parents did not want me to go overseas,” he said.

He added that quite a number of his course mates were now working all over the world because they could not get jobs in Australia.

Yes, Oz, as its own people fondly calls it, is no longer the country of milk and honey that it once was in the 1990s.

But I suspect that quite a number of Malaysian students are seeking to come home because Australia is not quite an exciting place – the pace is just too slow for some. Or the way the junior and his friends described it – “BORING”.

The late John Denver, a folk singer of some fame in the 1970s and 1980s, wrote a song about a place called Toledo, Ohio, in the US. The place was so boring that one line in the song went “They roll up the sidewalk precisely at 10, the people who live there are never seen again”.

These words aptly described most places in Australia because the people there value their “quality of life” rather than the pace of life. We Malaysians, especially those in the 20s, are too attached to the mamak stall lifestyle.

“Don’t talk to me about the quality of life now, not when I am just about to start work. Come back in 10 or 20 years; then the Australian way of life may appeal to me,” said the young Wong.

However, another reason for them to want to stay back is they do not want to lose the freedom they now enjoy by being away from their parents.

Why are they coming back? Aren’t the young ones not bothered by the so-called lack of political freedom in Malaysia?

“That’s why they want to come back. They want to change Malaysia,” said one of the more politically-inclined students I met in Melbourne.

But my son feels that those who are so inclined would not return but would rather stay and demonstrate on the streets of Melbourne.

As I have written before, most of the graduates are coming home because they did not enjoy the experience of cooking, cleaning and doing housework, after years of being waited on by at least one maid. It has got nothing to do with politics and economics – it’s all about the easy life.

Perhaps this should be the new catchphrase for Talent Corp in trying to lure back the graduating students – “Come back to the comfort of home”.

> Executive editor Wong Sai Wan still has a younger daughter who went to The Star Education Fair over the weekend to explore her options and hopes she chooses a country with a more favourable exchange rate.

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