The Cost Of A Career

The cost of education is going through the roof. Know how much it will cost you and the strategies to cope with it

- Sanjeeb Baruah and Meghna Maiti

Manish Arora, 46, a businessman based in Punjabi Bagh, Delhi, first started investing for his daughter Adya, now 18, when she was eight years old. Manish always wanted to send his daughter abroad for higher education.

That clarity helped him start planning early and save consistently to meet the goal. The family’s persistence and Manish’s organised approach paid off. Adya was able to join the University of Illinois, Chicago, the US, in September 2023 to pursue an undergraduate programme in psychology despite the steep cost that an international education entails.

Today, more and more students are opting for higher education. According to the All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2020-2021 released by the Ministry of Education, “The total enrollment in higher education has increased to nearly 4.14 crore in 2020-21 from 3.85 crore in 2019-20.  Since 2014-15, there has been an increase of around 72 lakh in the enrolment (21 per cent).”

Some of these stick to the engineering, medical and management courses in India, which remain among the favourites even now, while many others are choosing newer career options, and still others, like Adya, are choosing to study abroad in varied fields.

Most parents in India aspire to provide the best possible education to their children, but turning that dream into reality is not easy if they are not as well prepared like Manish was.

We explore the burst of new career options that your children might like to choose from, give you an idea about the explosion in the cost of education, and list strategies that can help your children realise their dreams and ambitions.

WIDER CAREER OPTIONS