Where is your daughter planning to study?

“As bilateral ties deepen, more Indian students could head to Russia,” read the headline in Business Standard on December 6, 2025.

- AMBI PARAMESWARAN

The article got me thinking about how the concept of international education has transformed over the last three decades.When I graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, almost half of my class of 1977 went to the United States for higher studies — some to earn a master of science, many others for PhD. Barring a few, all got full aid and financial support. If you were to do a survey of that cohort graduating from prestigious colleges around India, you would find that many of them had headed to the US or the United Kingdom (even Mahatma Gandhi studied at University College London). Most of them did not return.

Why did this large number go abroad? Was it because our education system was broken? I suppose it was a combination of factors. Yes, for some, our Indian universities and institutes of higher learning were ill equipped. But the bigger reason was the lifestyle that was assured to someone with a master’s degree or a PhD in the US. It was not something that could be matched in India.

Things, however, started changing around two decades ago.

Post-liberalisation, we saw the upper income segment becoming wealthy and ready to invest in the education of their wards. While the US and the UK were the desired destinations, other countries emerged as viable options: Canada, Australia, Singapore — and even Ukraine.