Why study abroad?

                

              This question has always haunted the students who are at the juncture of decision making as to which way should they turn to, in order to acquire higher qualifications. In this era of Globalization, it becomes all the more important to be exposed to international exposure for acquiring necessary skills such as communicative languages, cross-culture interaction, experience etc.                     

                There is no doubt in my mind that the quality of some of the educational institutes like IITs, NLAs and IIMs etc, in our country is at par with the best in the world. However, the best of the IITs find a rank of 250 in the list of world-ranking of the Universities. The number of students aspiring for these institutes is huge and that makes the competition extremely tough and stressful. Students and their parents find themselves to be under immense stress and at the end of the day only a handful of them are successful in securing the seats in the world renowned institutes. 

               And those students, who can't make it to these institutes, have to be contended with admissions to institutes of average repute. They thus inadvertently become a part of a herd of ordinary students who are not sure of the quality of knowledge gained by them. After having put in precious time, money and energy for a few years, they find themselves to be unfit for the today's highly fierce and cut-throat competitive world of professionals, where the only thing that matters is the individual skill and knowledge. 

                 Moreover, the scenario has been further worsened by a mushroom-like growth of private colleges, where unfortunately there is neither the faculty nor the facilities. Commercialization of the education today, has degenerated the quality to such an extent that the degrees and diplomas acquired, cannot be relied upon to earn bread and butter. 

                Education in our country lags behind with respect to world class curriculum standards. There is more emphasis on the theoretical aspect of teaching. And the system is kind of a very rigid type where the students never get an opportunity to design their own schedule of courses depending upon their level of comfort, understanding and degree of difficulty of the subject. Here the students have to follow the set path decided by the Colleges/Universities.

                Studying abroad, on the other hand, is a very different experience altogether and has a lot of advantages. First of all the preparation for admission to the institutes abroad, is much easier and less stressful which saves students and their parents/families from unnecessary agony. One not only gets to learn from the best of the institutes but is also exposed to different kind of cultures, gets to go to places, see the places of the host nation and the neighboring countries as well. Eventually, the student ends up with the exposure to world class work culture which propels his career to greater heights. The emphasis is more on the research side of education, as most of the Universities are funded by the leading industries to do research and development on their behalf and the Professors and faculty members usually involve the students in such research programmes. The Students also get opportunities to undergo practical training in globally renowned multi-national companies, which many-a-times, ends in absorption of the students in those very companies. The students find themselves to be compelled to come out of their comfort zone and adapt to the environment around. This results in pushing the boundaries further, qualifications acquired from the world class Universities are acknowledged and recognized the world over and are welcomed everywhere. All these advantages are alluring students to turn towards foreign countries for better opportunities and as a result, the number of students going abroad for higher education is increasing manifold year after year. A whole array of destinations like USA, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, New-Zealand, Ireland, Japan, Germany etc are amongst the favourite destinations.

                It is a common misconception that it requires a huge amount of funds to study in Colleges and Universities abroad. But there are a lot of institutes abroad, which do not require very high tuition fees. Banks these days advance loans very easily for higher education and this takes care of the fear of study debts prowling in the minds of the students. Also, job opportunities like teaching assistantship, lab assistantship, the research assistantship and "on campus jobs", help and allow the students to support themselves financially. 

      

                Research has shown that the students who take to overseas education outperform others in creative thinking because of their openness and willingness to take on the challenges. Thus, it can be concluded that as it is affordable, one should definitely venture into the realms of the overseas education, equip with world-class qualification and become more flexible and creative. Thus, education abroad helps in honing the prowess of the pupils and makes them global citizens.