With reference to the report “Education loan growth slows, rupee fall may add to woes” (December 16), I do not believe that the value of the rupee has a bearing on the number of students aspiring to go abroad. The numbers did not decline when the dollar was at Rs 35 or Rs 45 levels and they will not decline even if it were to touch Rs 60 levels. The reason is quite simple: irrespective of the value of the currency, aspirations for better education in foreign universities will never abate. The present slackness in the education loan off-take may be either purely seasonal, since most students would have taken their exchange before October and left for the foreign university, or because bankers are choosy owing to increasing bad loans in their education loan portfolio.
S Ravindranath, Coimbatore
