Even as the University Grants Commission (UGC) has cleared foreign varsities to set campuses in the country, a proposal on the same is still missing, Subhash Sarkar, Minister of State (MoS) for Education, in a written reply to Lok Sabha, said. The minister was responding to a question on the measures taken by the government to save money spent by Indian students to pursue higher education from abroad.
The number of Indian students going abroad to pursue higher education witnessed a steady jump in 2022 with an outflow of nearly 7.50 lakh students- the highest in the last six years and thrice as much since the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, data submitted by the Education Ministry revealed.
The uptrend has marked a 68% rise from around 4.44 lakh students who opted for higher education in a foreign country in 2021. The lowest outflow was witnessed in 2020 at around 2.59 lakh students, as the pandemic restricted movement, the Ministry added.
Furthermore, responding to the question of whether the cost incurred by Indian students for education in a foreign country is higher than India’s education budget, Sarkar said “The Bureau of Immigration, Ministry of Home Affairs, does not maintain the data on the amount being spent by Indian students to pursue higher education from abroad.”
The opposition has flagged this as the government’s inability to provide better learning opportunities to students in the country itself. However, M Jagadesh Kumar, chairperson, UGC, said that the large number of student migration for higher education is not just restricted to India, but globally this movement is a phenomenon. “In 2014, there were about 200 million students in higher education institutions globally,” he said while adding that by 2030 this number is expected to double.
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