Branded Education

 

Branded Education

                                                                      

 

 

Even before the futurologist Alvin Toffler highlighted it, we all grew up knowing the dictum that knowledge is power. Today the maxim is being paraphrased and emphasized by all that it’s an age of ‘knowledge economy’. Since knowledge has taken a centre stage in the economies of the world, knowledge-providers are now seen more as business enterprises. This transformation of perception and  prospect of huge returns have encouraged private players’ participation in the education sector. Businesses entering the field of education has changed the way educational institutions were run  in more than one way including making the institutions more conscious about branding themselves.

With rising number of private educational institutions, there is a fierce competition to stand out of crowd to capture the attention of potential customers/students. Educational institutions are thus looking at branding for identity as well as gaining or sustaining competitive advantage. This is why educational institutions today are faced with a formidable challenge to create a strong and distinctive image in knowledge seekers’ minds. This has triggered manifold rise in number of internationally mobile Indian students.  An internationally mobile student is an individual who has physically crossed an international border between two countries with the objective to participate in educational activities in a destination country, where the destination country is different from his or her country of origin.” (UNESCO, 2015). 

As far as India is concerned, it is the second largest source of international students after China. The total number of Indian students overseas increased from 66,713 in 2000 to 3,01,406 in 2016, based on the data from UNESCO Institute of Statistics. Furthermore, in 2018, over 17.7 million students used Studyportals to search for Master’s degrees and about 5.7 million– for Bachelor’s programmes indicating an increase of 37% and 77%, respectively, from users located in India.

In case of US alone, in 2019, the second highest international student population there, by their nation of origin were from India. With 202,014 students, China, being the first. Although, Covid has put a brake on aspirations of students seeking admission in foreign countries, it’s a temporary phase.

There are many factors motivating such a large number of students trying for admissions abroad, one of the main factors being  students’ inclination for options which offer more “value for money” in terms of employability. This brings us to the intriguing question of relation between education and prospects of employability, which will be explored in the next blog.