Uncle Sam Beckons

There is a good news for Indian students, especially the ones, who get their B. A., B. COM., and B. Sc. degrees. The U. S. universities have taken a decision to accpet these degrees for admitting the Indian students in the Grad programs in the States. So now, one need not spend an additional year doing unrelated course just to fulfil (12+ 4) requirement.

This step seems to prompted by declining trend among the Indian students for education in the U. S. Booming job market in India, emergence of other destinations like Australia, New Zealand and other problems, like Visa related issues have dampened the attraction of the U. S. This step will addresse it to some extent.

One can expect a large flow of Indian students (in addition to Engineering). One important reason being lack of good institutions providing M. A. / M. Sc. and Ph. D. degrees in India and a large number of students who want to pursue Masters and Ph. D. For example, a student who wish to pursue M. A./ M. Sc. in Economics, the options are limited to Delhi School of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, IGIDR, ISI and a couple of others. These institutions can't admit more than a couple of hundred students. But now this won't be the case.

This step has also exposed these institutions to the world competition.

For country as a whole, it's good, simply because it allows more of its citizens to have access to higher education, which leads to more skilled population. This is extremely critical for a country to grow in the knowledge economy.