'A New Status Quo'?

December 5, 2013
By Elizabeth Redden

A main takeaway of a new British Council report analyzing trends in Indian student mobility is that there is no one single trend. The growth in India's own higher education system has been rapid at the same time that the sliding value of the rupee has made overseas higher education more expensive. While the U.K. and U.S. are the top two destinations of choice, students are increasingly applying to universities in Canada and Germany, where they perceive education to be cheaper and employment opportunities to be robust. Canada stands out in terms of perceived opportunities for permanent migration, while students see Germany as offering world-class opportunities in the automotive, engineering, and manufacturing industries. The number of Indian students in Australia, meanwhile, appears to be rebounding after a precipitous fall following a series of violent attacks on Indian students in 2009.

The report, which is based on a survey of more than 10,000 Indian students as well as an analysis of existing data, is entitled “Inside India: A New Status Quo” – which raises the question, what was the old one? “I think the old status quo was the belief that there would be a continuous, almost limitless number of Indian students that would continue to flow into U.S. universities, U.K. universities, Australian universities, and that has not appeared to be the case,” said Elizabeth Shepherd, the head of research for the British Council’s Education Intelligence team. “There’s new interest in markets like Germany and Canada, decreased interest in the U.K. and the U.S. and fluctuating interest in Australia without a clear-cut trend emerging yet. But the greatest shift has been in India itself.”

Read more: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/12/05/british-council-report-argues-new-status-quo-indian-student-mobility#ixzz2mcw8x5jW 
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