Kerala has been witnessing an increase in students moving to Europe, Canada, Australia, and other countries for higher studies, and eventually settling there. Kerala’s Finance Minister KN Balagopal, in his 2023 budget speech on February 3, said that the state is paying attention to making the young stay back by creating more job opportunities and better facilities. The Kerala High Court recently attributed the reason behind the trend of youngsters leaving to the lack of infrastructure and aesthetic appeal in Kerala’s cities.
Benoy Peter, the co-founder and executive director of the Centre for Migration and Inclusive Development (CMID), a charitable organisation that works for the welfare of migrant workers, says that if we analyse the trend of migration, we can observe a neighbourhood effect. “If someone in the neighbourhood or peer group goes abroad, it becomes a chain action. The information on the money that needs to be spent, and the courses available are shared among peer groups. Bank loans are available and people make use of them as the middle class can afford to repay debt in instalments,” he elaborates.
The number of Indian students abroad was 40 lakh in 2012 and is expected to cross 75 lakh in 2025. According to the data submitted by the Ministry of Education before the Parliament in February this year, there is a 68% increase in the number of students going abroad for higher studies. The number increased from 4,44,553 in 2021 to 7,50,365 in 2022. This spike has been steady over the years – from 4,54,009 in 2017 to 5,17,998 in 2018, and 5,86,337 in 2019. The Kerala High Court recently attributed the reason behind the trend of youngsters leaving to the lack of infrastructure and aesthetic appeal in Kerala’s cities.
Govind, a 25-year-old from Thiruvananthapuram, went to Canada in September 2021 to join a postgraduate course in Supply and Chain Management. He says that the Cape Briton province in Nova Scotia, where he now lives, has scores of students from Kerala, pursuing different courses. Before deciding to migrate, he prepared for the Kerala Public Service Commission exams and wrote tests to get bank jobs. “At a point, I felt that the years would just go by like this, and decided to go abroad. I chose Canada since getting a PR (Permanent Residence status) was easier there. One can also go on a student visa and get a PR later. These days, my mother tells me that many young people in our neighbourhood are going abroad for studies. The trend was not this prominent when I left," he adds.
Anushree Chacko, a 25-year-old from Kottayam who moved to Australia’s Melbourne in 2019 to pursue a Master's in Communication and Digital Media, says that the desire for quality education was the primary reason which prompted her decision to move, backed by other reasons like accessing a better quality of life. "It is not easy to achieve a similar quality of life back in our country as the opportunities are limited. Also, there is moral policing, people’s intrusion in the lives of others, as well as a political and religious environment which is sometimes limiting. Not that we can't build a life in India, but it is tough,” she adds.
Anushree, who is now working in the healthcare sector in Australia, adds that the infrastructure development in Kerala is slow when the whole world is moving towards a more tech-oriented approach. “Here in Australia, I could build a better life in a short span of time. I was looking for a conducive environment that would help me to grow. It takes so much time and formalities back in Kerala to get things done,” she says.
Benoy cites that one of the major reasons for the increase in the migration of youngsters is that they are the biggest investment of their families, which have become smaller now with one or two kids. The education of children is prioritised, unlike in the past when other assets were considered more important. “A family in Kerala can now afford to send a child abroad since in most middle-class households, both parents are employed and there is no immediate compulsion on children to take care of the financial needs of parents. In the previous generations, the two lucrative employment fields were either medicine or engineering. But these also have shifted now,” he says. “There is also lesser hesitation within families to send daughters abroad,” adds Benoy.
Govind says that many students have now migrated and settled in his neighbourhood in Canada. “The province in Canada where I live is a small one. Canadians live there after retirement. Now, a lot of students have come and settled into this province. In India, it is the IT (Information Technology) industry that provides a competitive salary, but the stress in the industry cannot be managed by everyone. In Canada, the salary is better and I feel that the stress is less. Moving was a choice I made and not a result of any compulsion from family,” Govind adds.
Nakul, a 28-year-old student from Alappuzha, went to study medicine at a Russian University in 2014 after he appeared for NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) for the second time. “My rank was low and hence, I left for a foreign country to do a six-year medical course. There were 32 Malayalis in the batch. The majority of them came to Russia as they got a passing percentage in NEET, but the rank was not enough to secure a seat in any of the Medical Colleges in Kerala as the number of seats is low. There were also those who chose a foreign country because they did not want to study in Kerala,” Nakul says.
S Irudaya Rajan, an expert on migration, and the Founder Chair of the International Institute of Migration and Development opines that unlike the migration of the previous generations to the Gulf that attracted huge remittances to the state, student migration is a resource drain from Kerala. “The trend of student migration within the country began 25 years ago. In the initial decades, the trend was that students used to move within India. Students used to go to other states for higher studies, and that was an inter-state trend. Malayalis used to study in almost every university, especially in the renowned ones within the country. Now they have started migrating in large numbers to foreign universities, and this trend began 15 years back and has become more prevalent now,” adds Irudaya Rajan, who was also a former faculty at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram.
The reason for the students’ migration in huge numbers, according to Irudaya Rajan, is similar to what Benoy mentions — families can afford to send their only child or two children abroad. “This is called the new middle class in Kerala. Families are even being judged by which location and university their children are studying in, this has become a status symbol,” he says.
Coming to remittance, he continues, “This is an outward remittances trend which is not likely to turn into inward remittances since most of the students would choose to stay back in the countries where they do higher studies. So far, there has been no study on the economic impact of migration. We have not still woken up to the issue. The current students are the future Kerala diaspora. Hence, the government should initiate a study about its economic impact.”
While many view this upward trend of migration as brain drain, Harilal Madhavan, a faculty member at the School of Humanities under the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Thiruvananthapuram, terms it as brain circulation.
"Brain circulation is, for us, how to draw on skills, know-how, and other experience gained by our migrants in another country - whether they have returned or not," Harilal elaborates. “These highly skilled academic and technical migrants can create social and professional networks to mobilise human capital, financial capital, skill set, and information to enable technology transfer, give start-up ideas, collaborative business plans and sometimes, they can work as cross country linkages for opportunities. These skill migrations open doors for business ideas, entrepreneurship opportunities, and investment in the globalised labour markets. Conditioning our labour and technological policies are key in achieving the benefits of brain circulation," he adds.
He also states that the reason for migration is not solely to get a degree. “There is an argument that when foreign universities come to Indian campuses, the outflow will be stopped. I don’t think this will happen. Students migrate to foreign countries not just to earn a degree, but to get wider exposure and experience. Also, students who want to do experimental research would mostly prefer foreign universities, as it is quite advanced there. Salary or fellowship gap is another factor that lures students to other universities,” he says.
Kerala Higher Education Minister R Bindu tells TNM that student migration is not huge and such narration is a bit exaggerated. “The migration of students is a global phenomenon. As per data presented by the Union government in the last academic year, until November, 6,46,206 students migrated from the country. Of this, 12 % each was from Andhra Pradesh and Punjab, 11 % from Maharashtra, and only 4 % from Kerala. Also, the students who get enrolled for higher education in Kerala have also increased,” she adds.
“As per the data of the National Higher Education Survey, the enrollment ratio has risen to 43.2 % in 2020-21 from 32.4% in 2016-17. The number of students who migrated to foreign countries in 2019 was 30,948. In total, 13,64,536 students are doing higher studies in the state. The state is focused on providing better educational facilities for these students,” the Minister says.
The minister attributes the trend in student migration to the following things: Peer pressure, pressure from parents, the spurt in the number of agencies that facilitate overseas admission for students, the availability of education loans, social conditions like moral standards of people, better air and internet connectivity, etc.
"It cannot be said that all the students choose credible and recognised courses abroad. There is an opportunity in foreign countries to do work simultaneously with studies, but the part-time jobs that our students do in other countries, like working in restaurants and the like, they may not be willing to do in their home state. In the state also, we have started a scheme for students to work while studying. The current student migration, however, is not alarming and we can't say it is the students from Kerala who top the migration list in India,” she adds.
