Latest trends show that Indian students going abroad for higher education continues to rise at a rapid pace. The numbers have doubled in the last six years. According to a response to a recent query in Rajya Sabha, there are currently 11.3 lakh Indian students studying abroad. Numbers are set to rise in 2022, which will be a record year for students going abroad. This, despite the weakening rupee. These students pay billions of dollars in tuition fee alone (estimated at $8-10bn). They also spend an equivalent amount or more in living and travelling expenses. Some reports suggest annual amounts spent abroad by Indian students could be up to $30bn. These annual expense amounts are sizable enough to fund building many new colleges and universities. For instance, the government’s revised budget for funding eight new IITs in 2018 was Rs13,990 crore, or around $2bn at that time.
What’s going on? What explains the massive demand, even at prohibitive costs? There are reports of parents selling land, assets and taking massive loans just to send their child abroad.
We have even had a boom in opening of new private colleges in India in the last two decades. Yet, the allure of an international education remains at all-time highs.
Of course, most Indian higher education students still don’t go abroad. Tens of millions of students graduate every year from India. However, according to various surveys, some 90% plus students want to study abroad if they could. Why can’t we compete with international colleges? If Indian movies, music, books, food, clothes, apps, and hotels can compete with international ones, why can’t our educational institutions?
Answering this would require a hard, honest look at what we are doing wrong when it comes to education. Here are some reasons (and solutions) on why the Indian student prefers to study abroad:
- The average Indian college just doesn’t have the same brand or class as an average college in Australia, UK or USA. Barring a few Indian universities, Indian educational institutes have been unable to build brands. Educational brands are not about advertising or logos. Educational brands are about trust, excellence, cutting-edge knowledge and ethics. How many Indian private universities do you think relentlessly pursue these values? Many Indian private universities have built swanky campuses. However, their faculty, curriculum, open-mindedness and ethics remain sketchy. Putting your future in the hands of these people seems scary. It seems better to go to a 300-year-old college in the UK, even though it may not be one of the top ones.
- The few old Indian educational brands still dominate – Legacy helps in educational institutes. Hence, it is understandable that a St. Stephen’s college will still have its appeal and the IITs have a different class to them. However, the same few colleges that were considered premium when I was a child (and it was a long time ago, trust me) are still the ones considered premium today. Meanwhile, the applicant pool has increased more than ten-fold. Even the new IITs and new IIMs, despite having the name, just do not carry the same prestige as the old ones and are considered several notches lower. Renaming colleges or diluting a brand won’t do the job. It’s isn’t in the name, it’s in the substance – the people, work, ethics and values of the institution that ultimately give it the reputation. Sadly, barring a tiny handful, it just hasn’t happened in India for new colleges.
- Who is running the new Indian colleges – While we may have built swanky campuses and launched full page ads and mega-hoardings, who is running these new colleges? We may have improved the hardware, but we have a serious problem with the software. You need driven visionaries to build an educational institution. Random businessmen or over-the-hill retired profs from sketchy colleges aren’t the right people for the job. However, this profile forms the bulk of the leadership and management at some of these new institutions.
- Lack of Foreign university campuses in India – Even after decades of discussion, we don’t have campuses of foreign universities in India yet. Even if these foreign university Indian campuses can take a fraction of the students going abroad, it will be worth it. A reputable international university opening a campus in India (with or without a local partner) is more likely to follow rules and stick to values of ethics and excellence as it will a brand to preserve.
- The job opportunities – Frankly, India just doesn’t offer as much opportunity to highly educated people as some of the countries abroad. We have a few sectors like software that absorb a lot of engineers. We have some multinational jobs, often taken up by the few elite college students. We are good to provide well for our top-2% students, but not our top-20% students, who are also good and often can find good opportunities abroad. To fix this will require changes far beyond the education system. We need to open our economy more, drive massive growth, become a manufacturing hub for the world and have policies that attract investors into job creating sectors. We need to be able to offer more to our average youth than to just be a delivery boy, which seems to be the case right now.
One should not judge anyone going abroad to study further. Everyone has a right to pursue their full potential and seek best outcomes for themselves. However, India can stem some of this exodus. We can reform and make Indian colleges more attractive. This will require an understanding of what it truly takes to build an educational institution of repute. At the same time, we must make massive economic growth a national priority to create enough domestic job opportunities for our youth, so they don’t feel the need to go outside.