Higher education top priority of Indian students

Updated on: Monday, August 13, 2012

Higher education is still the top priority for Indian students. A study, conducted by Google India, highlights that the country ranks second in terms of the number of education-related searches on Google, just after the US with 40% searches related to higher education.

"40% students have a priority in finding out more about a course, a college and higher education in general. The trend that we have noticed is that 44% of the searches are on IT and vocational courses, 40% queries are related to finding about more about the Bachelor's degree, preferably engineering, which is followed by medicine and 16% queries related to finding out about Master's programmes with MBA topping the list," says Rajan Anandan, vice-president and managing director of Google India.

The 'Students on the Web' report, compiled by combining Google search query patterns and offline research conducted among 2,229 respondents in the age group of 18-35 years in seven metro cities by TNS Australia, found that online sources affect the final educational decisions taken by five out of six students.

According to the report, placements are the top priority for students in selecting a college to study in, which is followed by faculty and course content.

"Through the study, we found that students take a minimum of six months to decide on the course and college while they are in class XII. The search queries coming from mobile phones have also grown considerably, showing a growth of over 135% year-on-year and amounting to over 22% of all education related search queries," says Anandan.

Also, over 66% said that they use their mobile phones to access internet In India. Though not many colleges have worked on developing videos that can attract students, 46% of students want to watch videos when it comes to doing their research.

The report further pointed out that students, in terms of type of video content, also wanted to watch videos on career options/placements (46%), videos of the faculty (44%), videos of existing students and alumni (29%) and videos of classroom sessions (27%) to help them take more informed decisions.

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