(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) The UAE may have the priciest tertiary education amongst all developing nations, but this doesn't necessarily reflect the quality - with some parents saying it is still worth paying even more to send their children to study overseas.
Dubai-based Paddy Mishra, originally from India, paid for his two sons to study in the United States - one undertaking an international relations degree in Washington DC, and the other a business degree in Seattle. "Dubai doesn't have the necessary level of education they were looking at. (Education) is still very underdeveloped here. "It's totally different (in the US). There wasn't a choice at all as far as Dubai was concerned."
While the cost of overseas study was "always prohibitive", particularly in the US where it could reach $55,000 to $65,000 in the private universities, the US and the UK offered the best education options if you were able to fund it yourself or finance it through loans, he said.
Studying in India was cheaper, however the "competition (was) so huge, it's almost impossible to get into a decent college", he said. Dubai-based Vishnu Deuskar also paid for his two sons to attend both graduate and undergraduate universities in the United States.
"They were good at academics, and as a family we could afford to send them. These universities are the best in the world, clearly it's a no-brainer - you go."
The cost was very expensive, but worthwhile, he said.
His eldest son, who studied for an MBA at Wharton, had now opened a business in New York, while the younger, who had studied architecture and urban planning at Columbia and MIT, was now working for the World Bank in Washington DC.
However, others feel more comfortable remaining in the UAE and are happy with the level of education on offer. Dubai-born Abu Dhabi University student Solina Dallan, 20, said she chose to study civil engineering because it was the subject she most enjoyed, and her university offered a good programme.
She was optimistic about her chances of employment after graduating, and getting a return on the amount invested in her degree, given the amount of construction work and projects going on in the UAE, she said.
"The country is still developing. A lot of sites are going up... and there's a lot of big, challenging projects too." Many of her friends, most of them girls, had also chosen to study engineering, she said.
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