Learning from the Ukraine experience

The plight of Indian students stuck in Ukraine, mostly enrolled for medical education and desperate to get back home, is under the spotlight. Hundreds of students have taken shelter in bunkers and are running out of money and food. Others have undertaken the long and dangerous trek on foot to the Poland or Romania borders in the hope of crossing over to a safer country from where they can be evacuated. Social media is full of appeals from stranded students.

It has also brought to the fore the old question: Why do so many Indian students go to study medicine, engineering, and other subjects abroad, even to non-English speaking countries not known as prime education destinations? It even caused Prime Minister Narendra Modi to observe that too many Indian students were going to study to “smaller countries”. He asked the private sector to open more medical colleges in the country.

The fact that the number of Indian students who go abroad for studies is increasing every year is well-known. Currently over 770,000 Indian students are in various countries, and they are spending an estimated $28 billion on tuition and living expenses. Consulting firm RedSeer estimates that by 2024, the number of Indian students abroad would be close to 1.8 million, while their estimated spending abroad would go up to $80 billion.

It is easy to understand why students from rich and middle-income Indian families choose to go to the popular education destinations — the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, or Singapore. Apart from the elite colleges, the prospect of getting work visas and later settling in these countries is the lure.

What often gets missed is the sheer number of Indian students studying medicine and other courses in countries such as Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Poland, Russia, or China. These have emerged as preferred destinations for many Indian students. In Ukraine alone, there are an estimated 18,000 Indian students.

Part of the reason, as the prime minister alluded to in his speech, is the shortage of medical colleges in India. Over 1.6 million students give the NEET examination every year in the hope of getting into a medical college. The number of MBBS seats available in all medical colleges is estimated to be around 83,000. Of these, 44,000-odd are in government colleges, which offer subsidised and generally high-quality education. The rest are in private medical colleges where standards vary widely — but charges are high. A student who opts to join a private medical college may end up shelling out well over Rs 1 crore for the course. On the other hand, in countries like Ukraine, China, Russia, the Philippines, and Kyrzystan, the costs would range from Rs 20 lakh to Rs 45 lakh for the entire course.

Moreover, the quality of education in many of these countries is quite high and the teacher to student ratio is far more favourable than in India. And the degree is recognised in many parts of Europe though if the student wishes to come back to India, she or he will need to pass a stiff examination before being allowed to practise.

Will the private sector setting up more colleges in India solve the issue? It seems unlikely. Private sector participation in education, including professional courses, has not brought the costs down. Indeed, the costs have been rising sharply even though the teaching quality in a large number of them is mediocre or worse.

In engineering, there is an additional problem. Despite the best efforts of the All India Council for Technical Education, a large number of private colleges have extremely poor teaching standards. The graduates they churn out are often unemployable. Much the same case is in business schools’ education.

This is not to say that there aren’t excellent private universities and colleges in India. But these are expensive and often out of bounds for middle-income families unless the child gets a scholarship. Many countries abroad might give similar quality at much lower costs.

Meanwhile, the Union and the state governments have been sluggish in setting up government colleges and universities and professional institutes where reasonable-cost education can be availed of. India’s education budgets — both Union and state — are abysmal compared to what a country with India’s population requires. The problems are exacerbated by lax and poorly-resourced regulators who have been unable to enforce high standards.

In an earlier column, (https://www.business-standard.com/article/opinion/look-beyond-the-short-term-122013101790_1.html), I had pointed out that India had not been able to take advantage of its demographic profile because it had not focused on education like the Asian tigers did. Part of the reason is that successive administrations have not paid education the attention it deserves.

Low budget allocations are not the only problem. India’s education has lacked a sustained push by the government. When India gained independence, the government of the day was conscious of the need to set up world-class educational institutions and took the help of global universities to set up the IITs and IIMs and also create multiple central universities. But over time, education fell behind in the priority list.

The New Education Policy, unveiled some time ago, offers good suggestions. But again, it needs to be seen how well it is implemented and the outcomes monitored rigorously. The proof of the pudding lies in the eating, after all.

The writer is former editor of Business Today, Businessworld, and founder of Prosaicview, an editorial consultancy