Why Indians top list of foreign medical students in Ukraine

With 18,095 Indian students studying in Ukrainian colleges before the onset of the crisis with Russia last week, they topped the list of international students in the country.

Media reports citing the Ukraine Ministry of Education and Science noted that the next highest number of students were from Morocco (8,832), followed by Turkmenistan (5,322) and Azerbaijan (4,628). There were about 4,055 Chinese students in Ukrainian universities.

The main factor that drew Indian students to Ukraine was the ease of admission and the relatively low-cost higher education. For example, medical degree courses cost less than 70 per cent of the prevailing rates in India.

A six-year medical degree costs between Rs1.5 million and Rs2 million in Ukraine, while in India a student will have to shell out Rs5 million to Rs15 million for a four-and-a-half-year course. Though the costs in government medical colleges in India are quite low, but the competition is stiff, and a fraction of the total number of students who apply for admission get into them.

Records of the National Board of Examinations reveal that students sitting for the FMGE shot up from 12,116 in 2015 to 35,774 in 2020. Demand for medical education is huge in India; during the five-year period, an additional 30,000 medical were added within the country.