Professors do pay students out of government money, don't they???
College takes international students for two reasons: for undergraduates, mostly for tuition... but for graduate students, especially PHDs, they pay them for doing research, and this is why they take more Chinese students because they are more capable than students from elsewhere. Not sure about universities in Australia because I have no idea about them and do not care. But for US universities, they work this way.
They paid you for research and you don't pay them?? Ha!!! Tell that to my college.
Here are what they charge for a Research Student in my uni
https://www.mq.edu.au/study/admissi...earch-training-contribution-bands-and-amounts
https://www.mq.edu.au/research/phd-and-research-degrees/fees-and-costs
For my program that's 2 years. Which is A$11,155 a year, unless you are a commonwealth funded student, you are liable to pay both years of fees. For a PhD, you are liable for 3 years full time course study, so you would need to pay 3 full years. The same things applies, unless you are a commonwealth place student, you are require to pay in full.
I have checked some US degree before, they charge from $20,000 to $30,000 (UCLA)
This is how much MIT charged for their research and PhD student
https://registrar.mit.edu/registration-academics/tuition-fees/graduate
This is how much UCLA charged for research student
https://grad.ucla.edu/gss/library/remissionsgsr.pdf
Not to mention if you want to get a place in research project, you most likely required a coursework degree form the same college before you can applies.
And no, it works the same in the US (US School fee are also listed), our school have a bridging scheme in some US college (Stanford, USC and some other school) so we can exchange and work in the US given if we have the visa and appropriate document , and unless you are a graduated researcher, your pay is shit, by graduated researcher I meant you just graduate from a PhD. If you are still getting your degree, you get half the pay than a graduate researcher. In Oz, it's around 40k a year and in the US, MIT RA/TA gets around 35k a year. You probably just enough to cover the living expenses.
As I said, you don't really know much on Post Graduate System in the US or anywhere in the world.
Is this what you are doing for your professor?
I wish, my professor is a hot blonde in her 30s. I would totally do her if I have a chance.