Indian Students in Places Like Ukraine

I came to know of the number of Indian students studying in China only when the Wuhan lockdown happened. Ditto for the number of Indian students in Ukraine – I got to know the number only now when Russia attacked it. How come there are Indian students in these places? Sure, there must be some who go to either settle abroad, or because of genuine interest in a topic, but that can’t account for the destination being China or Ukraine…

 

Milind Sohoni’s article provides the big picture answer. Turns out there are 8 lakh Indians studying abroad. The biggest reason is, of course, the lack of jobs for a graduate in India. Sohoni shows this via back-of-the-envelope maths. A college grad would usually work for a company that deducts tax at source, i.e., he would be a tax-payer. There are only 3 crore tax payers in India. Assuming two-thirds of them are still working, and that people work for 20 years (which is low), he arrives at the figure of 10 lakh new jobs per year (this figure would be even lower if the work period was increased). And remember, not all of those jobs pay well.

 

The HRD ministry numbers show 30 lakh students graduate a year. That’s three times the number of jobs from the previous para. So even after getting a degree, one can’t be sure of a job, let alone a well-paying one. As an aside, this also explains why entrance exams are so tough – getting into a branded college is so critical. And hence proportionally hard.

 

Combine both of the above, and one can see why many go abroad for studies. And since not all can afford to pay or get a scholarship in the universities of the most sought-after countries (US, UK), many end up going to cheaper countries.

 

How cheap is higher education in some of these countries? And do such degrees confer enough benefits? Rashmi Belur looks into this question in the context of Ukraine in particular. There are no entrance exams and the costs are similar, at times even cheaper, to India for medical courses. So it’s medical students who go to Ukraine.

 

But such students are taking a risk. Since one can’t be sure how the quality of education may be in those countries, India created a mandatory qualification exam for those who got degrees abroad. If they fail the test, they can’t practice medicine in India:

“Students with medical degrees from Ukraine, China, the Philippines and Russia often take these tests for qualification.”

In case of Ukraine, the pass ratio in that exam is very low, around 18%.

 

I guess the reason why so many Indian students go to the non-Western countries for higher education then boils down to one word: desperation.

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