Studying abroad still worth it!

Madhavi Mauskar

The cartoon caught my attention first; it was meant to!!! Meritoriously an older girl is shown following an Online lecture with “India” in her arms!!  Couldn’t stop myself from humming these lines “Phir bhi dil hai Hindustani”!! Metaphorically, it is also correct!!  That’s what we tell our students at SWEC – BE GLOBAL, TURN LOCAL!!

The article highlights on high fees and low standards of online lectures and by mentioning few US Universities brings to light the stealth with taking exuberant fees and being taught by TAs.

The main purpose of the concept of studying abroad is to get their On- campus experience after having had ours in the homeland. A different excellence, exposure and expertise are what students long for and I feel they are 100 % correct. Why not???

Many German and European Universities have been quick, very quick to make positive amends to their otherwise “strict” strategies. Obviously they do not wish to lose on their ‘foreign students’. But German Universities, especially the ones with “NO TUITION FEES” had anyways nothing to lose. Yet, they went ahead, gave admits, conducted regular webinars, gave prompt and timely instructions, revised their rules, only and only to accommodate the students and to see to it that they “do not” miss or waste their year.

When COVID0-19 struck all of us in March 2020, the summer students were immediately taken under the Universities’ wings and were made a part and parcel of their system – while the students attended lectures sitting in India and yes, they were not taught by TAs, but by proper, experienced professors.

I urge the parents and the students to think a bit differently at this ephemeral pandemic situation; obviously think 10 times of deferring the “travel” in these days, however do not stop them from taking the ‘abroad experience’. What can be better than having your son/daughter in front of you at home, yet enrolled in a foreign university – atleast till flying opens up!!! Also financially it is on our side, wherein you push the budgets six months from today, giving you the time to breathe!

Face-to-face hybrid education is going to definitely be the new norm, but to wait till our institutions back home get fumigated of nepotism and politics is a long, long wait. COVID-19 will bring the much necessary metamorphosis to our institutions, to look at the good in adverse times and NEP is coming!!

The writer is the Director at SWEC – South Western European Corridor (www.mastersineurope.in)