The falling value of the Indian rupee against a soaring US dollar has brought the Ivy League dreams of higher education aspirants crashing.
A rise in the value of dollar means students who are keen on pursuing a masters or undergraduate degree programme in American universities have to shell out more money towards fees, boarding, lodging expenses and for travel.
The trend of steady decline in the value of rupee against the dollar which started in April is now continuing for nearly 40 days. On Tuesday, the value of the rupee sank to a historical low of `58.98 per dollar, before recovering to `58.47 per dollar.
According to D Nedunchezhian, CEO, Technocrats India College Finder, this is bound to impact the budgets of students who keen to pursue education overseas.
“Apart from the fee, other expenses like food and cost of boarding will also increase. If we calculate the expenses in terms of Indian rupee it will be huge. If a family had planned a budget of `30 lakh for education a child abroad, now the expenses would rise proportionately. Students will also be hard hit if they have to travel to their home country for emergencies like health or meet their families,” he points out Since banks have a cap on education loans for pursuing courses in foreign universities, some families might be forced to raise money through other channels like mortgaging a property. “If the students fail to get employment abroad after completion of the course, they may have to return to India. In such an eventuality, they would find it difficult to recover the cost of foreign education,” Nedunchezhian cautioned.
According to him, it would be worthwhile to pursue a post-doctoral programme in a US university rather than getting ordinary degrees.
However, C G Balaji, managing director, Education Overseas Academy, claims that the students’ enrolment in US universities will not decline because of the pull in the currency market.
“Students who aspire to study abroad will start the process six-seven months in advance and they appear for the SAT (standardised test for college admissions in USA), Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) and International English Language Testing System (IELTS). They might have also paid the application fee and received their admission letter,” he said.
Nonetheless, he added that the falling value of rupee would serve as a bitter pill.
Addressing another aspect, he said banks would have sanctioned loans when the value of the rupee was around `54-55 per dollar. “Now parents have to spend 40 per cent additionally,” he pointed out.