Foreign education underwent major overhaul in the recent years due to factors such as pandemic, high inflation in most countries, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and general political and economic instability. Because of the shift, many courses have become obsolete in the current times while many others were newly introduced.
Abizer Merchant, director (India and Sri Lanka) at Macquarie University highlights that courses related to health, cyber security, IT, business analytics, environmental studies and psychology have been popular in recent times. Besides these, demand for management and engineering continues to be good.
Lakshmi Iyer, managing director, SI-UK India notes, “Covid-19 and global conflicts have acted as a wake-up call to many and because of this students are showing more interest in choosing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses. Another reason for a rising trend in pursuing STEM programmes is the intersection among different fields, resulting in new and more specified disciplines."
For instance, she adds, technology is being used in areas like studying biology resulting in a specialised field called bioinformatics; data sciences which is about handling big data, cyber-security which is about protecting online information and data or bio robotics which is about studying and creating robotic systems for biology are in great demand now.
Ms Iyer further adds that during the pandemic students liked learning online about things like Artificial Intelligence, cloud computing, big data analytics, and digital encryption. There was a surge in enrolment for short-term courses on mental well-being, foreign languages, and art related courses. "Even though the pandemic is done, tech courses continue to be in demand but students now like to learn in different ways,” she adds.
Talking about the changes in the mode of imparting education in the post Covid period, Mr Abizer says, “Many universities are now offering most of their courses on campus and in face-to-face format which is supplemented with online material or short videos to enhance the classroom learning. However, some courses are offered in both online and offline format (or a blend of both) especially where the demand is from working professionals who are unable to travel or commit to full time study.”
On countries that have gained significance in the post covid period, Mr Abizer says, “All major study destinations such as Australia, US, UK, Germany, Canada have seen an increase in enrolments from Indian students over the past two years. On the other hand, students travelling to Russia, China and Ukraine for medical and health programs would have seen a decline in enrolments.”