Bad break for a dear friend.

My friend Karun (left, with fiancee Apurva) appeared on the front page of today's Age, for a very wrong reason:

Angry students gathered outside colleges demanding answers. Karun Sachdeva, 24, from India, was studying at International Design School. He said he did not know whether he would be refunded the $2500 he had paid for the next semester. "I made the biggest mistake coming to study in Australia," he told The Age. "The quality of education here is shit. We have nothing but the media to rely on now [to protect our rights]."

Sadly, Australia-based 'schools' that aggressively market to overseas students have proven time and again to be scam artists that pocket tuition fees and then fold, leaving foreign students to fend for themselves in a city that's proving increasingly inhospitable to students from the sub-continent.

I've yet to meet anyone in Australia who works as hard as Karun or who more desires to build a quality life for himself and his lovely fiancee (whom I met for the first time this week -- she recently arrived to begin a Master's program in physical therapy). His faith in Australia may be shattered, but I hope his faith in himself and his bright future with Apurva remains strong.

Good luck, bhai.