The ‘market’ for higher education in India is the largest in the world. According to an India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) report, higher education encompassed 34.2 million students in 751 universities and 35,539 colleges in 2016. This is the upper-tier of education; only a quarter of India’s youth make it to this level.
What makes it such a lucrative segment is that it’s a number that can only rise. 260 million students plod on in schools, forming the next big wave of potential college graduates. When it comes to estimating the future opportunity, the numbers quickly turn into billions.
Forecasting for 2020, management consulting firm Technopak puts it at $180 billion, IBEF goes for $144 billion and Accenture estimates $37.8 billion for higher education alone. With the large forecasts and capital in circulation, it’s easy to miss one crucial aspect of the Indian student body – many of them want out of India, altogether.
In 2004-05, over 120,000 students left to study in leading universities outside of India. This was the last reliable measure provided by analysing RBI data. Informal estimates see about 360,000 students studying abroad in 2015. To pore over a list of leading universities the world across is to quickly see the reason why. Out of the world’s top 200 universities as calculated by Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings (QS), only three were Indian.
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