Every year, lakhs of students leave their homes, often at the tender age of 15 or 16, to chase education in faraway cities. This migration is not born out of choice but necessity. For decades, the best coaching centres, top faculty, and structured exam preparation have been concentrated in a few metro hubs. Families are left with little option but to spend heavily on rent, food, and travel, while those who cannot afford it are excluded from the race altogether.
This system extracts both an emotional and financial toll. Young learners struggle to live away from their families, lose the comfort of familiar surroundings, and carry the burden of adjustment when their only focus should be learning. Education should open doors, not uproot children from their roots.
A System Built on Displacement
For long, this displacement was seen as inevitable. Cities like Delhi, Kota, Bengaluru, and Mumbai became synonymous with success in competitive exams. Students from smaller towns either bore the costs of migration or missed out altogether. The result is an education system that rewards access to urban resources rather than talent alone.
The dependence on coaching highlights this divide. According to the Ministry of Education’s Comprehensive Modular Survey 2025, about 27% of school students in India take private coaching, with the share higher in urban areas. Costs mirror this gap: an urban higher secondary student spends nearly ₹10,000 annually on coaching, while a rural counterpart spends less than half that amount. For many families, migration feels like the only way to bridge this inequality.
Online Learning: Promise With Limits
The rise of online education has started to ease this pressure. Digital platforms now bring high-quality lectures and live classes into millions of homes, reducing the need to move away. But the digital divide remains real. While India has over 950 million internet subscribers, only 25% of rural households report having reliable access at home. Even among connected families, devices are often shared, and network quality is patchy.
This shows why digital learning cannot stand alone. Online platforms are a critical part of the solution, but not the whole solution. What students need are hybrid models that combine offline resources with digital extensions, creating a balanced approach that works for every learner, irrespective of location.
Many Pathways, Not One
This vision aligns with the National Education Policy 2020, which rejects a one-size-fits-all approach. Students learn at different speeds, through different methods, and with different levels of support. True equity comes when education adapts to the learner, not when the learner is forced to fit the system.
Imagine a student in a remote village who learns from downloaded videos, attends weekend classes at a local centre, and practices from a workbook guided by a community teacher. Another may thrive in live online classes, while someone else prefers the stability of a physical classroom. All deserve the same chance to succeed without being forced into a single mould.
The Future of Learning
Looking ahead, the next leap will come from AI-driven personalization. An AI-powered tutor could adapt to a student’s individual pace, offer instant feedback, and fill gaps in understanding without the need for expensive coaching or migration. A child in a small town could access the same quality of support as one in a metro classroom.
The real opportunity lies in blending this technology with local learning centres and community-driven models, creating networks of support that keep students rooted in their homes while opening doors to world-class education. Instead of migration being the price of ambition, learning itself will travel closer to the student.
India’s strength lies in its diversity, and our education system must reflect that truth. Migration for education should no longer be the norm. It is time to design systems that move towards the learner, respecting differences, reducing inequality, and leveraging technology responsibly.
Education should not mean leaving home or fitting a mould. It should mean giving every student, in every town and village, the chance to learn, grow, and thrive where they are. That is how India can truly democratize education and prepare its young people for the future.
- Ankit Gupta, CEO - Offline, PhysicsWallah (PW)
