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As study-abroad options dwindle for Indian students, a good question to ask is what the state of India’s higher education sector is. The answer, I’m afraid, is not pretty.

AI is set to disrupt the sector. While the path ahead looks tough for legacy publishers like S Chand Publishing and Arihant Publications, things don’t look encouraging for others in the industry either.
In the last two years, foreign education plans have been dealt a body blow by changes in regulation, a rise in fraudulent activities and misaligned incentives for brokers, students and foreign universities. Indian students are among the worst hit.
As the company weighs a move into test prep ahead of a 2027 IPO, the question is whether entering a category from which upGrad has consciously stayed away so far makes sense.