US Remains Top Choice For Indian Students Pursuing Higher Education Abroad

About 67 percent of Indians prefer the US for higher education, reveals a new report by fin-tech platform Prodigy Finance. The report on the State of Higher Education in Study Abroad Market showed that besides the US, Indian students prefer the UK and France at 8 percent each for pursuing their master's degree abroad. Most students who went abroad for higher education were from Maharashtra (20 percent), Karnataka (15 percent), Delhi (12 percent), and Telangana (8 percent).

Almost 70 percent who traveled abroad for higher education last year were male and 30 percent were female, the report showed. The study further found that for engineering courses, Northeastern University, the University of Texas at Arlington, and Stevens Institute of Technology were the most preferred universities, whereas for MBA programs Georgetown University, University of Toronto, and the University of Rochester have been most popular.

There has been severe uncertainty among the students traveling abroad for higher education as most of the families went through a financial crisis amid a nationwide lockdown last year. Regardless, there was a growth of 41 percent in applications in 2020 when compared to 2019. This is quite significant if compared with the 55 percent loan disbursements in 2019 after the 108 percent growth witnessed during 2018.

In 2020, Prodigy Finance disbursed approximately Rs 30 lakh to each student in terms of loans for higher education. "The year 2020 posed several challenges for students, parents, and educational institutions around the globe. It even forced the financial markets to condense, which in turn limited the amount of capital we could supply promptly to students last year.

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"As international borders start to reopen gradually in 2021 and campus learning looks promising in the next quarter looking at the vaccination drive, we can expect a 30-35 percent growth in 2021 as compared to 2020," said Mayank Sharma, Country Head India, Prodigy Finance, in a statement on Tuesday.

Prodigy Finance has also recently partnered with six international colleges, offering a global portfolio of 800 colleges and 1000 post-graduate courses to Indian students. The company has, so far, financially assisted 20,000 students across the globe, it now aims to disburse loans worth more than $1 billion to over 20,000 deserving Indian students in the next three years. (IANS/JC)