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The mobility in education will significantly enhance their soft skills and cultural awareness while ensuring professional and heterogeneous connections globally
The recent pandemic outbreak caused a massive scale disruption for students and learning systems. The findings from the Graduate Management Admission Council’s (GMAC) Application Trends Survey 2022 suggest that the total applications to graduate business schools declined by 3.4 per cent year-on-year. Social isolation and lack of in person communication amplified anxiety levels among students. Learning continuity emerged as another big challenge during nationwide lockdowns and it increased penetration of the internet and tech devices, allowing students access to online education. The pandemic significantly altered nearly every aspect of higher education, including admissions and learning assessment procedures.
Equipping learners with future ready skills
Before the pandemic, the interventions in the education system were mostly centered around improving teaching methodologies to secure tech-enabled learning and advancing teacher training. But the World Economic Forum (WEF) highlights that we are going through a fourth industrial revolution and automation is likely to take the job market by storm. And due to this ongoing global tech shift, companies have increased their focus towards a skilled workforce. Thus, narrow, and traditional academic pursuits are no longer feasible. Considering the same, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 suggested several guidelines in favour of the internationalisation of Higher Education. These guidelines are aimed at fostering academic collaboration between Indian HEIs and foreign HEIs.
Global learning outcomes
Cultural exchange and education mobility programmes help assimilate advanced academic practices and imbibe futuristic skills. Global education combined with on-campus education helps build culturally competent individuals who later succeed in diverse work environments. The offline experience involves post-class discussions, making learning more holistic and immersive. This strengthens the social skills and adaptability of students. It’s worth highlighting how the internationalisation of higher education in China resulted in considerable achievements in education and skilling. Indian students have followed a similar trend of studying abroad for advanced degrees and post-graduate programs. But owing to the pandemic, many international students faced unprecedented impact due to pandemic-related border closings and major visa and immigration policy changes in countries like the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the US. The Covid-19 situation disrupted internationalized learning for some time, and with the announcement of reopening borders beginning in November 2021, international students started returning to their colleges and universities.
Restoring in-person education
The reopening of international borders was an early sign of recovery. After two years of being completely overwhelmed by the pandemic restrictions, students are planning admissions to their desired destinations. GMAC Application Trends Survey 2022 states that the MBA remains the most considered program type among prospective students and garners the lion’s share of applications. The survey also highlights how Business master’s programs are now a popular option for prospective international students. Overall, 2 in 3 business school candidates consider a business master’s program type (62 per cent), the most popular among them the Master of Finance (21 per cent), Master of Data Analytics (19 per cent) and master’s in management or Global Management (16 per cent).
Another interesting finding captures how Master of Information Technology programs had a positive year, growing total applications at most programs year-on-year (53 per cent). Most applicants were international (93 per cent), as they have been in past years, and most programmes saw either international application growth (47 per cent) or stability (16 per cent) this year.
As 2022 is ending, the international education market is trying to sustain recovery by opening pathways for international applications. The current situation favours students exploring post-graduation options to get global exposure and acquire the most in-demand skills. The mobility in education will significantly enhance their soft skills and cultural awareness while ensuring professional and heterogeneous connections globally. The quest towards becoming an economic superpower has dramatically modified education settings where mobility has emerged as a solution that can efficiently overcome skilling and employability limitations.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article above are those of the authors’ and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of this publishing house
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