Clover van Rijsbergen, originally from the Netherlands, moved to Perth in 2017 so she could fulfil her lifelong dream of studying in Australia and enrolled into a psychology degree.

Now regrets the decision.

She is about to run out of funds for the course, without being able to complete it, which is going to set her back more than $60,000 and this is all required to be paid upfront.

Even though most of her classes are online, she said every semester, against the backdrop of the rising cost of living, her fees increase.

Ms van Rijsbergen works at a sex toy shop to get by and lives in a squalid rental property with black mould and wiring problems.

Of her time so far studying in Australia, she told news.com.au: “It really was an eye-opener. Am I just a walking wallet? You (Australians) don’t value us as people at all.”

“I actually couldn’t get a job until I changed my last name to Smith,” Ms van Rijsbergen lamented.

“All my classmates that aren’t Australian have had the same experience.”

It was a particular blow to her during the Covid-19 pandemic when visa holders did not qualify for JobKeeper, and the then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison telling all foreign students it was “time to go home”.

But determined to see her dream through, Ms van Rijsbergen clung on and managed to nab a job at an IGA store to cover her rent.

She was frustrated to see that despite the pandemic and the subsequent shift to online classes, the cost of her education continued to rise.

“All my life savings are in this course (but) my life savings are already not enough,” she said.

“Nobody held a gun to my head (but) it is disheartening that all my savings aren’t going to cover it.”

When she questioned her university about whether increasing the fees was even legal she said she was accidentally sent a rude email in a reply-all fail.

“I didn’t know that they could willy nilly up the price.”

She claimed in the reply, a member of staff at the university mentioned that her placement could be “revoked”.

Ms van Rijsbergen’s rental situation, too, brought with it more problems and a side of Australia she hadn’t imagined when she first moved here.

Along with her rising uni costs, she says she is also copping a rental increase every six months.

“The bathroom is literally just a hole, it’s damp and it’s wet,” she said.

“The electrics in this house are so dodgy. The owners didn’t want to rewire everything, now we’ve got extension cords (everywhere).”

She also said she had cut her feet several times because the floorboards kept lifting up.

When complaining about this to the rental agency, she claims they told her over the phone to “put more rugs down”.

Ms van Rijsbergen said she was speaking out in the hopes of shining a light on the experiences of many international students across the country.

alex.turner-cohen@news.com.au