Plot skills map before reforming higher education

The food fight is over a massive pie. Last year, the government informed parliament that more than 13 lakh Indian students were studying abroad and that the total had grown by about half in half a decade.
Image used for representation purposes only.
Image used for representation purposes only.(Photo | Express)
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2 min read

Indian students studying abroad are getting increasingly caught in geopolitical crossfires. A few years ago, the speed at which tens of thousands of students could be repatriated from places as farflung as Beijing and Kyiv depended on the diplomatic levers India could pull.

Then an unseemly spat with Justin Trudeau’s Canada furrowed the brows of lakhs of Indian parents whose kids study there.

When Donald Trump won his second term with a hard message against immigrants, many Indian students started looking elsewhere as they realised staying back to earn dollars after getting the degree would be tougher. So it’s no surprise that France is now trying to get a larger slice of this lucrative market.

The director of Paris’s Sciences Po recently dinged his global competition when he said that, unlike other countries, France would not make it difficult for Indians seeking student visas.

The food fight is over a massive pie. Last year, the government informed parliament that more than 13 lakh Indian students were studying abroad and that the total had grown by about half in half a decade. This outflow costs Indian families a lot - by one estimate, the forex outgo for studying abroad was almost USD 50 billion in 2022. It also reflects a changing India.

The richest fifth of the Indian population can now afford the costs that would have been out of reach for most of them even a decade ago. The number of seats in India, on the other hand, has not kept apace; nor has the number of top institutes.

The latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings by Subject, released Thursday, accommodated only one Indian institute in its top 100 for the first time - the Indian Institute of Science, at the 99th spot.

Given this recent surge in outflow and increasing geopolitical uncertainties, the government might want to reprioritise a few plans beyond the weather-beaten demand-supply analysis.

First, it should formulate curriculums for the future economy, as China did more than a decade ago.

Second, it should map the skill requirements across industries - a plan more spoken of than acted upon. And then, it must incentivise universities to ramp up infrastructure and faculty to fit the new map. It’s easier said, for sure; but the changing reality says the urgency to act is greater than ever before.

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