The current state of geopolitics and an ecosystem of volatility around the globe has affected student mobility and added many more parameters while choosing the right institution for higher education. Financialexpress.com explored the current state of Indian higher education institutions or HEI’s and what can be done to help increase the overall attractiveness of Indian HEI’s which have the potential to compete with the global market. Taking the context of the ongoing Ukraine crisis, recently more than 20,000 students mainly pursuing medical education returned to India under very uncertain circumstances with no real clarity in terms of re-enrolment or credit transfer. With this volatile geopolitics and the shortage of seats, it is high time India invests in world-class indigenously developed HEI’s to retain its talent. Resurgence of COVID-19 and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine is a stark reminder of the state of global and geopolitical affairs. Putin went as far as activating nuclear deterrence protocols. How does that affect study abroad decisions for students considering Europe? Dr. Sandeep Sancheti, Provost, Marwadi University said, “These are the ground realities of today’s aspirational world. Conflicts have always been there and would remain the same as we can never become equal. Turbulence is a part of everyone’s life. However, every challenge teaches us something new. As a result, we tend to change as per the need of the situation and move ahead in a reformed manner.
In reference to studying abroad, blind decision-making would be replaced with more mature and rational decisions. Accordingly, potential students should choose safer institutions and countries for their studies and might overlook cost considerations for their intended education. Also the aspects of choosing the right institution will not be purely decided by academic excellence but by an overall package.”
Sharing his thoughts, Sahil Aggarwal, Co-Founder & CEO, Rishihood University said, “All of Europe has been heavily reliant on oil and gas from Russia. As of now the situation in Europe is tense with no foreseeable end to the conflict. With all major European nations pledging to cut off reliance on Russia’s oil and gas the long term impact of these decisions will definitely hurt their economy with higher inflation and cost of living especially with regards to food, commodities and fuel prices, along with a possible recession. However, the conflict will eventually end. What students should think of is in terms of the wider implications of how it will directly affect them and what the future holds. While it is still early to comment on the matter, students are generally price sensitive and may find rising costs coupled with reduced post-study placement opportunities not as satisfactory as they used to be. In this scenario all options across the board should be carefully explored.”
Close to 20,000 Indian students were enrolled in Ukrainian HEIs, of which large percentages are pursuing medical education. This situation needs to be averted, but how? “Complete aversion to such challenges is not possible due to a variety of long term prospects like job opportunities, better salaries, better professional satisfaction, among others. Current situation in Ukraine is one of such unpredictable events and can happen in any part of the world. The disruptions caused can affect several economies, their citizens and undoubtedly their national policies including the educational ones. However, a robust and well-performing Higher Education System at all levels of education in India would definitely minimize such risks and also deliver peace in the minds of students and their families. Liberalization of education which has been applied in engineering or management streams can also be an attractive proposition for retaining potential medical students within the country. Active international partnerships, exchange programs, credit transfer, to name a few are other good avenues to give our students better exposure and mitigate the lure of pursuing medical education outside India. NEP has highlighted and attempted to address many of these challenges and the onground implementation of the same will aid in minimizing risk,” Dr. Sandeep Sancheti said.
According to Rishihood University’s Sahil Aggarwal, “The Ukraine crisis can be deemed a black swan event and such things do not happen regularly. Having said that, it cannot be denied that today’s world is increasingly uncertain with events such as COVID and the Ukraine crisis exposing how fragile supply chain and mobility across nations actually is. The only real long term solution in my mind is to develop indigenous capability and routing significant investments in that direction. Increased spending on education has shown significant social improvement and creation of a strong ecosystem of research and innovation will be even more crucial in the coming days. In this regard, government, academia and corporations should come together and create a new valuable ecosystem for students.”
Experts are of the view that when it comes to improving seat availability without improvising on quality, the national as well as international needs are to be linked or seen here. “Blindly increasing the capacity cannot be the answer; in fact it will lead to many other kinds of problems later. As per some of the media reports, though conflicting, we already have sufficient numbers of medical practitioners in our country and therefore one would be under a dilemma of whether to increase the seats or not. Not just for medical streams but the same is also true for several other streams like management or engineering.
Having said that, a gradual increase in the capacity along with good quality of education at all levels is a must for a country like India where aspirational youth is dominating the entire population. Quality can also be achieved by appropriately modifying the norms, implementing the rights of education, handholding of young institutions and also investing more in the education sector. As an example, this can be achieved with appropriate allocation and utilization of 6% of the GDP as suggested by the NEP 2020 which is currently pegged to only around 2%.”
Purely focusing on core medical courses may be a very narrow approach to solving the issues related to Health education. Many new and allied courses in health and paramedical domains like Occupational Therapy, Physiotherapy, Nursing, Traditional medicines etc. can also be strengthened to reap the best out of the overall existing medical education system. Effective use of technology can provide solutions to most of the current challenges which we face in our day to day life. Education in general and medical education in particular, lacks adequate use of technologies like CAD, VR, modeling and simulations, use of medical mannequins, etc. These technologies can be utilized to improve the quality as well as making it more scalable, reliable, reproducible and repeatable. A bane to medical education has been the cost and once again proper use of technology can be a boon for it.