The Degree Of Separation Diminished

• About 1,60,000 students leave India every year to study abroad, mostly for engineering, MBA, medical or legal training
• Liberal arts courses in film, media and literature are also finding Indian applicants
• Mid-career courses in specialised fields such as patient care are also taking off
• Indian students are largely motivated by a desire to work abroad. They expect better salaries when they return to India.
• Chances are, promotions come quicker if you’ve lived, worked or studied abroad

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India has some 500 universities, 21,000 colleges, and dozens of locally available international vocational study options. Yet, a National Knowledge Commission report says 1,60,000 Indians went abroad for studies last year. Among them, 1,00,000 alone went to the United States. Sure, a foreign university degree could be a significant leg-up for someone who returns to India. For instance, the IIT boy who attended an MBA programme in the US or the IIM girl with a Canadian technical degree may be the first choice for employees to be put on international projects.

But for students interested in foreign education beyond engineering and business administration to lawyers, doctors, and a host of other self-employed professionals such as artists, chartered accountants, publishers and theatre persons, does the international tag really boost their career prospects? Remember, it’s expensive—some have to apply for bank loans to pay the Rs 20 lakh (approximately $42,000) needed for a year’s tuition fee.

So, when it comes to foreign degrees, do you pay your money and take what you get? “No,” says Narayan Krishnaswamy of Talking Heads, a Bangalore-based human resources consultancy. Here’s why: “There’s no one-word answer, but the foreign university’s pitch often is, ‘Come abroad, see the world’ or ‘Learn in a multicultural environment’. Both these usps have no value on a CV,” says he. That’s not what Kriti Sharma, 28, who studied management in Scotland in 2007-08, had expected when she left her managerial job in India for further education. At first, returning home after completing her degree seemed like a natural choice, especially since the economic downturn had killed work prospects in the UK. But Kriti found no job related to her specialisation. An arts graduate with a management degree focused on media, she ended up in communications strategy. Now, she’s plotting a return to education, in something that will give her the “real” expertise she needs—either in communications technology, or in strategy—neither of which she got from the previous stint abroad. “I’m lucky I didn’t have a loan to repay,” says Kriti, “I guess the one thing you learn from studying abroad is to adapt,” she says.

Then there’s Navaneet Baruah, a 29-year-old lawyer in Delhi, who completed his LLM degree from the School of Law at Queen Mary College, University of London, in 2009, and now has a growing arbitration practice in the Supreme Court. He says the course “really helped” because in his line of work, he deals with lawyers coming in from other countries for related courses. “There are few lawyers in India working in this field, so it works out well for me,” says Navaneet, whose LLB degree was from Guwahati University.

For someone with, say, a liberal arts degree in the US, a bank loan to repay, and the usual low-paying liberal-arts workplace, foreign education may be a disadvantage, says Krishnaswamy. “Not everybody will become the M&A head at a top consultancy. Mostly, people will do regular jobs involving regular skills, which I think regular Indians are best at. I’ve seen too many guys with foreign degrees just not settling in India. They wander about, lost in some Indian maze,” he says.

A student at Oceanic Consultants

While the rules that disallow international universities from setting up campuses in India are now being gradually relaxed, in part to arrest the brain drain, Indian students still want international degrees for another reason—an opportunity to move out of India permanently. Naresh Gulati, who runs Oceanic Consultants, a successful international student recruitment service that has placed tens of thousands in Australia, New Zealand and other countries, says the one thing that unites all Indian applicants who study abroad is that they don’t want to return. “They want jobs abroad and permanent settlement thereafter. If they return, they want higher salaries and top assignments,” he says. Gulati says he’s not aware of a single student he placed abroad who returned. “There may be a few, they may not have gotten in touch,” he says.

But return they do. Folks such as Ritobrata Paul, 26, who earned a degree in film and literature from the University of Warwick some years ago, moved to Canada where he worked in a bank before moving back to Calcutta where he’s now employed in the family leather business. Ritobrata, who can rattle off the many things film and literature could have led to—“writing film reviews, organising film festivals, or studying filmmaking”—is now in half a mind to pursue management abroad. “I’m making short-term plans right now, setting short-term goals. The filmmaking course did help me sharpen my instincts, made me a keen observer, taught me to research,” he says.

Like Ritobrata, Pavithra Gangadharan returned to her family business after a stint abroad, but in her case, after interning at a large hospital in the US where she picked up patient-care skills. Gangadharan, now 24, manages the geriatric care wing at her family-run hospital in Hyderabad, and plans to return to further education in a few years—“maybe management, but I’m also considering an institute like the Indian School of Business in the city,” she says.

For people like Krishnaswamy of Talking Heads, who often deal with those returning with foreign degrees, Gangadharan may have achieved the holy grail of learning abroad—she didn’t spend a large amount of money, and learnt specific skills. The one advantage of studying outside India, says Krishnaswamy, is that you can get a scholarship that’s nearly impossible to find in India. “I know a guy who visited a job fair, got into a university, took a Rs 28 lakh loan, and he’s now working to pay it off. Usually, a successful returnee will have gone to a Stanford or Lancaster on scholarship,” he says.

Somehow, going abroad is considered to have intrinsic worth—it probably doesn’t. It’s great to belong to institutes whose reputations have been built over the ages, but for the most part, employers don’t consider the foreign-educated guy as special, though they do look out for the odd gem. For, ultimately, no school in the world has been very effective in bridging the gap between classroom lectures, the academic world, and life on the street.