HomeNewsIndiaIndia’s poor spending on higher education is making other countries rich
Trending Topics

India’s poor spending on higher education is making other countries rich

Every year thousands of students spend big money to study in colleges and universities abroad.

May 19, 2020 / 10:35 IST
Story continues below Advertisement
Representative Image
Representative Image

The government has launched a massive repatriation effort to bring back thousands of Indians stranded across the world following the coronavirus outbreak. Students, from neighbouring Bangladesh and as far as the United States, are among those headed home as part of the Vande Bharat effort.

The repatriation of students is a stark reminder of the failure of policymakers to build educational institutions of eminence. This is best illustrated by the number of students going overseas for higher studies.

Story continues below Advertisement

An exact number is difficult to arrive at but by adding the figures reported by overseas Indian missions, it is possible to reach a fair number. These numbers are likely to be higher, as they don’t include students who go for a vacation, stay with relatives or friends and enrol for short-term specialised courses in lesser known institutes.

Even an approximation of the numbers is important.

COVID-19 Vaccine
Frequently Asked Questions

View more

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.
View more
+ Show