View: Is ‘studying abroad’ still worth it?

There is good reason why Indian students and their parents hanker for a higher education ‘abroad’, especially in institutions carrying the Ivy League and Oxbridge goldmark. Places such as Stanford or Harvard in the US, and Trinity or Imperial College in Britain have, for decades if not centuries, provided not just the best that quality education can provide, but especially for many Anglophonic Indians, something that is deeply aspirational, providing a ‘golden ticket’ for social mobility that goes well beyond what one’s LinkedIn profile will contain.
Much of the high value is created not just by what goes on in the ‘tried and tested and branded’ academic exchanges in these Hogwarts, but also by the immersive experiences that comes with being there – from engaging ‘fireplace chats’ with tutors over sherry and string theory, and getting lost in labs and libraries, to the many rituals of campus life and arcana – that together form part of ‘top college education’ and ‘weaponise’ the Yale or LSE product in the Indian socio-economic marketplace with a ‘foreign degree’.

But for the Indian parent and his or her ‘pride and joy’, a spectre is haunting campuses – the spectre of Covid-19. With US and British universities – not to mention institutions across the world that depend largely on foreign students (four of Australia’s top universities, for instance, rely on foreign students for a third of their income) – severely restricted or even shut down, with no idea of how things will shape up post-Covid, many are asking a strikingly simple question: Is studying abroad worth it?

The College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College in North Carolina believes that less than a quarter of US universities are likely to teach mostly or wholly ‘face-to-face’ this fall term. Last month CNBC showed that overall enrolment in US colleges was down 15%, with international enrolment down by 25%. This has resulted in a tuition fee loss of an estimated $23 billion.

While the numbers of one postgraduate in three, and one undergraduate in seven, studying fully online in the US may arise out of Covid necessity, the question is whether students will be willing to pay an estimated annual tuition fee of around $55,000 for what would largely be a top-certified online masterclass. Are you willing to pay the same monthly maintenance fee indefinitely in your building society complex minus lift, parking, security, gym and pool services?

In a June 14 episode of his Patriot Act series, Hasan Minhaj asked in his ‘Seriously?!’ style: ‘No one has a clue what college will look like in a year. So, if you’re about to go to college, or are in college, or a parent, you’re probably wondering, is college still worth it? What are you really paying for?’

Minhaj goes deeper into the question and finds a malaise that was incubating well before Covid. US universities, he finds, have been increasingly opting for ‘Uber education’ – replacing tenure professors having indefinite academic appointment by ‘freelance’ adjunct professors; and more and more teaching assistants (TAs), who are graduate students (in our terminology, post-graduate students), being roped in to teach courses. Purdue University, for instance, has 26% of its teaching staff drawn from TAs, and TAs from Yale, Harvard and the University of Chicago are among those across the US who have been protesting about their pay and little to no work benefits much before Covid.

Add to this most universities spending only a fraction of their endowments on academic and administration costs – Harvard’s $40 billion endowment is largely parked in hedge funds, real estate etc – and a ‘priority problem’ can be detected. Minhaj even agrees with Donald Trump for once when the president says that most US colleges spend only 5% of their endowments every year on education. It certainly sits precariously with why some universities should include, say, a multi-million dollar Lazy River – a water ride found in theme parks – literally at the cost of lower tuition fees, especially in the time of a pandemic.

Two University of Michigan and University of Pennsylvania students have already filed class action lawsuits in South Carolina claiming that they paid for services they are no longer receiving, including face-to-face interactions with their professors. Despite the reduced ‘college services’, most US universities are holding out on reducing fees.

While Minhaj finds the advice doled out by the likes of Tesla boss Elon Musk, hedge fund manager James Altucher and venture capitalist Peter Thiel to not ‘spend $2,00,000 on a college degree and waste four years of your life’ rather rich – considering that a college degree is still a ticket to, if not guarantee of, success, dropping out of which most people are surely to be ‘punished’ for having less qualification in the job market – paying the same fortune for higher education in the US while SFH (studying from home) has all the signs of a rip-off.

Who knows? Someday, an online-face-to-face hybrid ‘education’ model may close the experiential gap between desi higher education and a foreign one. Something that should encourage folks closer home here right now to fumigate our institutions of political meddling, nepotism and other extra-curricular activities to get our ‘campus act’ together.