When a 20-year-old Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was advised to study law in Britain by a family friend, he had to weigh the pros and cons like any student today. He could qualify for the bar in London in half the time it would take him to do a BA in Bombay.
The challenge then, as now, was money. He had no scholarships or patrons forthcoming. Ultimately, the young Mohandas managed to cover his expenses through the sale of his wife’s jewellery and help from his brother. He set sail for the Isles in 1888 and the rest, as we know it, is history.
More than a century since, and the same rationale applies to students who want to pursue their education in the UK. A master’s programme is doable in half the time of a master’s in India, but costs several times as much. And though the time needed to travel to Britain has been cut short by months, the red tape around doing so has increased. More than 30,000 Indians pursue their studies in the UK today, under visa regulations that grow tighter by the year.
The number of Indian students in the UK in 2015 was half that of 2011. The trend was spiralling downward much before Brexit, but now that Brexit is here – bringing with it a political landscape that is anti-immigration (and where students are considered migrants). Is Britain still a safe bet for a higher education?
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