Students still want to study abroad, but for new reasons

The disruption in international student mobility caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has not made a major dent in the aspirations of school-leavers in India and Nepal to study abroad, but generational changes in attitudes coupled with opportunities within India mean universities overseas cannot just sit back and expect that their international reputation will draw students.

In a survey published this week of over 2,550 students in India and Nepal conducted in June and July by the education think tank IC3 Institute, 83% of Indian and Nepalese high school students reported that they remain optimistic about the future despite current challenges faced by education systems due to COVID-19. And a third of them said they plan to study abroad in the immediate or near future.

But for Indian students in particular, who made up 80% of the respondents of the ‘Student Quest’ survey, weighing up whether to stay in India, partly due to the uncertainties of face-to-face teaching during the pandemic, is not the only dilemma. Attitudes are undergoing a generational change, said IC3 Institute CEO Rajika Bhandari, who co-authored the report with Anna Esaki-Smith, managing director of Education Rethink.

Slightly more than half of the respondents – 52% – said it was too early to tell whether the coronavirus would impact their higher education plans, while a quarter said their plans had been disrupted – of these, 37% said they were now exploring online learning options, with 32% saying they would no longer attend their college of choice, either abroad or at home.

But Bhandari noted that, unlike other surveys of Indian students, ‘Student Quest’ looks at study abroad plans against the backdrop of changes within India in education at the same time.

“One of the things that really surprised us – we think there is a new kind of Indian student emerging. They appear to be making decisions that are much more self-directed, driven by their interests and what excites them, and going beyond the purely pragmatic motivations of salary or the prestige of a job,” Bhandari told University World News.

“Everything this year has been overshadowed by COVID,” Bhandari said. “But we feel that this is an evolution that was already taking place and is not necessarily driven by COVID.”

The survey found that the most important consideration to students making career choices is passion for the job or industry, mentioned by 56% of respondents; the perception that the job will be fun and enjoyable, cited by 48%; and then compensation for the job mentioned by 43%.

Another notable finding is that, although parents are still key influencers in student decision-making, their recommendations for future careers were not one of the top factors driving career choice.

Attracting the ‘new’ Indian student

The report points out that ‘pull’ factors or the appeal of key student destinations have become stronger than ‘push’ factors. “It might be the lack of quality domestic provision [in India] that pushed the student to study overseas, but we are now seeing a shift in that it’s more the pull factors that are drawing students,” Esaki-Smith said, adding that recruiting institutions will have to address this shift.

“If they want to study abroad, then their purpose has changed,” she added.

With social media, the world of the school-leaving cohort has opened up even more than for those in their twenties. “No wonder they’re thinking they don’t need to be in these orthodox careers to be successful,” Esaki-Smith said.

She noted that this shift means that, from the perspective of universities in host countries, “it is going to be much more challenging to appeal to or recruit this type of student because they are much more individualistic, rather than simply [looking at] how much they can earn as a doctor or an investment banker.”

“Back in the day, simply being a known institution in the host country was enough for a student to aspire to study there,” she noted.

When choosing to study abroad versus staying at home, the quality of institutions abroad was still the weightiest factor, with 68% of respondents reporting this, followed by the availability of a more flexible curriculum abroad, cited by 51%; and then the perceived positive correlation between obtaining an overseas credential and professional success – 44% of respondents mentioned this.

Changes in India

But changes within India are affecting the ‘new’ Indian student, including the emergence of higher quality institutions in the past decade. “When students look to what’s available in India, they see their educational options expanded significantly with many new institutions in India offering new options for study, new disciplines,” Bhandari said.

“So much is changing, even within the Indian context, it’s made students believe they can do something different,” Bhandari said. “It’s not so much that a student is now no longer going to be a scientist, but it’s more that if they want to pursue neuroscience, they also want to learn sociology.”

The recently released National Education Policy, which outlines greater flexibility in the curriculum and more emphasis on skills education, will also fuel changes in student choices, she said.

The pandemic has amplified new student thinking. “So now every professional, every scientist and every engineer is being called upon to think about how their scientific expertise could help with the biggest challenges the world is facing now.”

COVID has also been a boon for India’s newer avant-garde, cutting-edge private institutions, Bhandari said. Students would apply to these institutions as a backup or least favoured option, “but when COVID happened and the reality set in that they wouldn’t be able to go abroad or they did not want to go abroad because of their health concerns, they began to take the homegrown institutions much more seriously,” she said.

However, Bhandari believes the new institutions will not be able to meet the country’s demand for quality education because of a huge population going through schools.