Many thousands of overseas students had taken out huge loans against family properties in their homelands to enter the cookery, hairdressing, business and finance courses now absent from the list, All International Student Association president Navjot Singh said yesterday.

"I have had 200 calls in three hours. Many people are really frustrated and disappointed and feel they can't go back home," Mr Singh told The Australian.

The government has cut by more than half the number of occupations and professions in the skilled migration program.

The new skilled occupations list -- aimed at cleaning up the rorting of cookery and hairdressing courses by dodgy colleges to achieve migration -- had dashed the residency hopes of thousands of students, Mr Singh said.

"They fear their family homes could be repossessed, as that's how they got their education loans of $30k to $100k," he said.

Mr Singh, who addressed a rally at Sydney's Harris Park last June in the wake of a series of attacks on overseas students, said many students felt "100 per cent betrayed" by promises of residency by the Australian government, education agents and providers.

Students were likely to take to the streets in protest over the coming weeks, he said.

"The only difference is it won't only be Indian students protesting this time, but students from China and other countries as well," he said.

Immigration agent Karl Konrad has backed Mr Singh's worries about distraught, debt-laden students protesting in the wake of the list, and urged providers to put counsellors on stand-by.