The primary focus of Indian students tends to be on Ivy league and large universities on the East and West coasts. However, America’s 600 inland higher education institutions — many as good as the best — are unknown quantities to our school leavers and graduates, writes Dilip Thakore & Summiya Yasmeen Although because of adoption of inorganic socialist ideology immediately after independence in 1947 from almost two centuries of exploitative colonial rule, India remains one of the world’s poorest countries with an annual per capita income of $2,097 (Rs.172,000), somewhat paradoxically, it also hosts a middle class estimated at a humongous 432 million with annual household incomes of Rs.5-30 lakh ($6,000-36,000 ppp) by PRICE, a Delhi-based think tank. This translates into the world’s largest middle class after China, and greater than the entire population of the United States. This status conscious middle class is highly aspirational and unlike the majority of the population, is well-aware of the upward mobility value of high quality education. They send their children almost entirely to fees-levying private schools (48 percent of all 260 million school-going children are in private K-12 education) and are desperate to enroll them in the country’s Top 500 colleges (out of a total 43,000) and 300 (1,110) universities, especially the 23 globally admired Central government-run IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), 20 postgrad IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) and 273 government medical colleges. Unsurprisingly, competition to enter the best colleges and universities is intense. For instance, the 23 IITs admit a mere 2 percent of the 260,000 higher secondary school-leavers who write their famously tough JEE (joint entrance exams). The remainder 10 million school-leavers scramble for admission into the country’s Top 300 government undergrad colleges and universities and Top 500 private colleges/universities ranked by EducationWorld in April and May. Yet the dream of all middle class households is to bestow their children foreign — especially American — higher education. With their sprawling immaculately landscaped campuses, capital-intensive infrastructure including huge libraries and research capabilities, and high quality faculty, universities in America are sought after by India’s upper middle class who have become acutely aware that the best gift they can give their children is foreign — particularly American — higher education qualifications. And increasingly, households are readily selling land, homes, jewellery, stocks and shares and/or taking large loans to realise their American dream. Inevitably, not a few agents and consultants have mushroomed across the Indian landscape to promote American colleges and universities which are anxious to enroll undergrad and postgraduate students from India. Over the past half century, Indian students at American universities have not only contributed cultural diversity to their campuses, but many have gone on to distinguish themselves in all walks of life back home in India as also in American academia, business and industry. It’s worthy of note that the top-ranked Deans of Harvard Business School, the Booth School of Business and President-elect of Tufts University among other blue-chip American higher education institutions (HEIs) are India-born. Moreover, Indian alumni…
