Every Indian housewife desires that their children be more intelligent than their husband and this explains the rising demand for school education in India.” This humorous reasoning by my academic friend Prof. R Vaidyanathan (IIM-B) can also be extended to the domain of international education, which has, many a time in the past, seen the strongest resilience and the sharpest recovery.
The Indian students’ outbound traffic in the global international education space is driven by the wide range of experience (lacking in India) the Big Four—the US, the UK, Canada and Australia—offer to them. Besides the Big Four, other countries are also competing equally with the leader—the US—in attracting international students. The focus of many countries on Indian students makes it a standout country in the global student mobility growth curve. This is a huge blue-ocean opportunity for global stakeholders in higher education, and with India overtaking China as the most populous nation in the world along with its richest demographic dividend, it shall be the cynosure of global eyes.
The Indian response has seen baby steps in the realm of internationalisation of education policies, both as a consumer and a contributor. As a consumer of international education, decisions made by parents and students appear to be distanced from policies in this era of global education experience. That is one of the biggest reasons that the recent move to allow foreign universities to establish campuses in India may still not prevent the increasing outflow of students searching for opportunities outside the country.
Be that as it may, certain global trends present an interesting perspective for the nation to charter its trajectory with a view to maximise the benefits in a mutually rewarding basis, given that the current student mobility has been benefiting host countries more than India. The fact that Indians are heading large enterprises like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Adobe, Novartis, Starbucks, etc. build Brand India. How long are we going to celebrate such individual success stories when the time has come to start celebrating about institutional and nation’s success?
Are we adequately building a stronger nation through indigenously designed autogenous mechanisms that retain and attract global student talent is the larger question of interest. This is also an important question considering the growing possibilities at massive levels from the Big Four who need Indians more than ever in the years to come. Here is why:
An interesting study by HoloniQ highlights the US under extreme pressure to attract foreign students for various reasons. By 2030, it is estimated that over nine million students will leave home country to different destinations to pursue higher education at all levels with an annual direct expenditure of over $500 billion. With such a high global market for international education, the competition among the top host nations will get fiercer than before. It is in this global backdrop that the American trio riot—employers’ demand for 2.5 million STEM jobs to fill the shortage by 2030, declining youth population and the compelling need to grow and revitalise domestic capacity in strategic industries—forces the US to get its acts together to reverse its declining share of access to the world’s top students. Needless to mention the growing geopolitical tensions with China may be a speed-breaker to the Chinese student mobility to the US.
The Indian story unfolds an interesting perspective with its estimated share of students in various global destinations increasing and particularly doubling from current two lakh to four lakh in the US by 2030, pipping China to become the number one source country. If Chinese parent-students are immune to the geopolitical undercurrents, then one in every three students in the US shall be a Chinese, Indian and from a long tail of other country sources. The larger issue that India faces, however, is the length, breadth and depth of its strategic policies towards making it a global destination for international students, given that the Big Four and chasing countries like Germany, France, China and Russia are allocating huge resources, with richer policy agenda in the pipeline.
With attractive tuition fee and in some cases zero tuition fee, will India be able to achieve its desired outcome insofar as attracting foreign students is concerned? Is there a need to strategise India’s internationalisation of higher education policies with a difference? With the US and Australia already students’ favourites among Quad nations, can Japan emerge a strategic partner-choice? More questions emerge with many answers in my next article. Till then, it’s a quiver to be filled with more policy arrows.
S Vaidhyasubramaniam
Vice-Chancellor, SASTRA Deemed University
vaidhya@sastra.edu