Getting Ahead in India Means Getting Out

By VIR SINGH

NEW DELHI – Parth Vaishnav can’t wait to graduate, but he doesn’t think very much of the bachelor’s degree he will receive from the University of Mumbai next summer. And he believes employers won’t value it, either.

Indian students listened to President Obama at St. Xavier’s College in Mumbai in November. More Indians are looking abroad for educational opportunities.

He is applying to engineering schools in the United States, which he has been told offer the flexibility, diverse courses and hands-on experience he seeks.

“Basically, all of us in my class, we were pretty disappointed with our systems,” Mr. Vaishnav said. “In the last three years, we have learned absolutely nothing. Everything was pretty theoretical. Courses in the U.S. offer practical experience. In India, as far as the syllabus goes, you have absolutely no flexibility.”

Mr. Vaishnav is among a rising number of students in India’s rapidly expanding younger population who want, and can pay for, a better education. Yet they know that in a country where thousands apply for each spot at a handful of top universities, the chances of this happening are remote. These students say a good foreign degree will get them a better job and a better life. And if the potential return on investment appears worthwhile, they will put their money on it.

In interviews with students around India recently, most said they wanted to strengthen their credentials outside of the country and voiced hope for growth in India after returning. They also spoke of the usual fears and concerns of students headed overseas.

“One thing that is common across students going to any country is, ‘Look, I am making this investment, what are my returns?”‘ said Ruchika Castelino, the head of Indian operations of Study Overseas, a company that advises students. “That’s such a huge question that students have. Then everything else follows: ‘Where shall I go, what is the kind of course, job placements, etc.’ “

She estimates that the number of Indian students going overseas annually has doubled in the past six years, reaching more than 200,000.

For those students who have made the decision to head overseas, several issues must be addressed. For Shivanika Gyani, finding a way to pay more than $150,000 for a two-year master’s in business administration is not the biggest challenge. The first hurdle, she said, is getting into a top American business school, which means scoring well on the Graduate Management Admission Test, or G.M.A.T.

“For the U.S., I need to break into the 700s to get in to a good school,” she said, referring to a grading system in which 800 is the maximum. “These days I don’t socialize at all, and I talk to people only if they want to discuss G.M.A.T. and business schools.”

Why did she choose the United States? “If I go to America, there is more chance of my network being more global because more people from around the world go to America,” said Ms. Gyani, 29, who worked at a head-hunting company in Mumbai after college.

She has looked at some programs in Europe, but feels it is “not really the best place to go right now, because employment opportunities are limited and you have to learn the language if you want to work.” The location and courses offered by the London Business School are attractive, but Ms. Gyani has one big problem with Britain: “The weather depresses me. It’s a huge factor. I had a long chat with someone. He said: ‘Keep weather as a consideration. Your cost of living will go up in a cold place.”‘

Shivam Arora, a high school senior in Mumbai, has the same problem when he considers living in Canada. Even though he has been told that the country offers scholarships to students like him who are enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program, he is planning to apply to Canadian colleges mainly “as a backup.”

For students where money is more of an issue, they cannot be choosy. For many of them, one-year programs at British universities are a big draw. Vishal Gill, a supply-chain specialist at Tata Motors, said a two-year business degree at a well-regarded Indian institution costs about $34,800. For the same money, or less, if he considers the cost of a yearlong program at the Indian School of Business, he can spend a year studying at a good British university. And he can choose courses that focus on his specialization. “Why not go abroad, compete on a global platform and pay less?” he said.

After completing his degree, Mr. Gill would also like to work overseas. He is familiar with Singapore because one of his employer’s suppliers is there. “It is a country where all of the big corporates have situated,” he said. “No racism is there. It is a good place to be in.”

But even if his plans to go overseas don’t work out, he is confident Tata Motors will reward him. “After doing my master’s, they will give me a salary hike,” he said. “For sure.”

That’s what Saurabh Parihar, an electronics engineer, has heard from his cousins who work at global companies in India. He says that in the past 5 to 10 years, raises for workers who return with degrees earned overseas have made even conservative families less reluctant to send children abroad. His father, a government employee in the northern town of Jodhpur, will have to get a loan to send him to a year of graduate studies in Britain. But Mr. Parihar is “somewhat confident” that a British degree will allow him to repay the loan.

“All you need is that initial break,” said Deepak Krishnakumar, an engineering student who is applying to doctoral programs in America. “That you get there.” A student at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology, he said there were now many more jobs in research and development.

Rajeev Varma, who is earning a master’s degree in organic chemistry in Mumbai, agreed. “The pharma companies in India are coming back like anything,” he said. “It’s booming. Even if there’s a financial crunch, pharma companies are never at a loss.”

He said science students who go overseas get opportunities not widely available in India, like working with researchers from the leading companies in the world.

“If you work with good international labs, you get very good opportunities,” he said. “You get very good exposure.”

“Exposure” is a word that came up in nearly all of the interviews, no matter what a student was studying.

For Mr. Vaishnav, the engineering student in Mumbai, exposure is more than a buzzword. He saw his classmate transform completely after transferring to a Canadian university and benefiting from the academics there.

“He has learned 10 times as much in the last three years, even though he’s a year behind,” he said. As part of his engineering degree, the friend built an electronic drum set and a sprinkler system for farms. “He has enjoyed everything.”

Indian student industry a study in shams and scams

AUSTRALIA’S lust for high-dollar Indian students has led to a thriving black market in sham marriages, forged English language exams and bogus courses, and turned a once-respected international education sector into a recognised immigration racket.

While the federal government and industry work to repair the damage caused by a recent spate of attacks on Indian students in Australia, education agents say the violence has shone a light on a $14 billion industry riven with corruption.

An investigation into the overseas student industry has found thousands of Indians each year are being enrolled in dodgy courses at inflated prices and sold unrealistic dreams of cheap living and plentiful jobs.

The Australian has found operators across the Punjab, the main feeder community for Indian students in Australia, openly advertising “contract marriages” for aspiring immigrants to partners who have passed the mandatory English test for a student visa.

For an additional fee, agents will arrange bank documents and loans to satisfy Australian immigration law that demands students have the means to support themselves for the duration of their course.

Industry insiders say a flourishing market has also developed around the International English Language Test System, with students paying anything up to $20,000 for a good result.

Sonya Singh, a respected Indian education agent servicing the Australian market, says the myriad scams offered to foreign students each year have made “Australia a supermarket where people are buying stuff off the shelf”.

“A good-quality Indian student notices a completely no-good student on the same flight as him to Australia and starts to wonder where he’s going,” she said. “Indians are so conscious of branding and Australia’s reputation has suffered a lot because of the recruitment process.

“My own kids didn’t want to study in Australia because they had a perception that poor-quality students go there and that if they told their friends they were going to Australia, they would be laughed at or thought of as lesser.”

Corruption is now so rife among India-based education agents that Ms Singh says she has had to institute a new policy across all 24 of her agencies in India and Australia. “The first thing they must tell every student that walks through the door is ‘We don’t arrange funds and we don’t arrange marriages’,” shesaid.

“In Melbourne, we get lots of requests to arrange IELTS scores and work-experience permits (to satisfy new requirements that a student must have completed 900 hours of work before being granted permanent residency).”

Last week, police arrested three people in the Punjab city of Ludhiana for impersonation and forgery after they were found to be sitting the IELTS exam for aspiring foreign students.

A police spokesman told local media the scam was an “organised racket” and further arrests were expected.

Foreign students and a voracious Indian media have reacted angrily to the recent attacks, prompting government and industry to announce legislative reviews, investigations into student welfare and a 10-point plan to reform the sector.

A delegation of government, police and education officials will tomorrow) conclude an eight-city tour of India designed to assure agents, parents and an Indian government made nervous by intense domestic media coverage that everything possible is being done to ensure the safety of foreign students.

However, Ms Singh says the root cause of student tension is not the attacks but a deep disconnect between the life they were told would be theirs and the debt, loneliness and disenchantment they find is the reality.

Fifty-one foreign students committed suicide in Australia last year, a fair proportion of them Indians whose families had sold land and taken on huge loans in the hope their child’s success would repay in multiples.

Robert Palmer, who runs the Overseas Students Support Network in Melbourne, says supplying students to Australia has become a gold mine for education agents.

While universities and TAFEs pay about 25 per cent commission on first semester fees, equivalent to about $1200-$1500 per student, private institutes will pay up to 30 per cent of the entire course fee, providing a clear financial incentive for agents to channel students their way, and even into courses in which they have no interest.

And there is no shortage of willing students. The Australian approached six young men on the streets of Jalandhar, three of whom said they aimed to be studying in Australia by the end of the year. Among them was Jaspreet Badhan, who said he hoped to get permanent residency in Australia after studying hotel management. He added that many of his friends were hoping to study overseas.

Harmeet Pental, South Asia director of the Australian university-owned IDP Education agency, believes the problem lies with Australia’s immigration processes. “The US interviews every single student going there — whether it’s for two or five minutes — and then makes a call on their fitness,” he said. “For Australia, agents have a list of skill sets given by the high commission and of the documentation required. That’s it. The process is driving the behaviour.”

Ms Singh says the Australian government policy of giving priority visa consideration to students who train in fields listed on the Critical Skills Shortage register has turned “genuine” students away.

“Every time a new (critical skills) list comes out, education providers start introducing those courses.”

But Colin Walters, the federal Education Department official leading the Australian delegation in India, says that should change following the Indian government’s decision last week to regulate the agent industry.

“The sector has grown very rapidly and there are some criticisms about some providers, so we need a vigorous audit system so their outcomes can be carefully scrutinised,” he said.