Slowdown or not, the pasture continues to be greener on the foreign shores as far as education is concerned. And it is not just traditionally popular destinations and universities that are in demand.
The recently release Google search trends show that prestigious universities such as Harvard and Yale are now competing for attention with what was once considered Tier-II universities such Cornell, Purdue and Berkley when it comes to gaining interest from the Indian student community.
The search results taken for the whole of 2013 shows that even though Harvard still tops the search trend result, the others have been searched a minimum of 70 per cent to 95 per cent.
The University of California, Berkley is searched the most by people in Karnataka, while Purdue, Cornell, Yale and Harvard are searched the most by people in Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand respectively.
A Google release also pointed out that it is interesting that Indians are not limiting searches to just the United States of America. Asian universities such as in China, Japan, Singapore and Dubai are also searched extensively and Tamil Nadu seems to the State that searches most for all these universities. There were not enough searches for universities in Japan.
Karnataka had the second highest searches for universities in China and Singapore, and for Purdue and Cornell Universities.
Education New Zealand (ENZ), the government agency for the promotion and marketing of New Zealand education internationally, said the new rankings in the annual Mercer Quality of Living survey show New Zealand cities Auckland (third) and Wellington (12th) listed among the top dozen in the world. Most of the cities in the top 15 in the ranking are European centres. A release said each year, over 11,000 students from India go to New Zealand to study and more than 50 per cent of these students are studying in Auckland.
