No job in hand, students in U.S., U.K. return to India
By siliconindia   |   Thursday, 21 May 2009, 16:01 IST   |    13 Comments
Printer Print Email Email
No job in hand, students in U.S., U.K. return to India
New Delhi: The students who left India for a better career in the U.S. and U.K. are now returning to their homeland as they could not find a job after completing their courses there. What precipitated the situation is that those who had got offer letters from some of their dream employers later found the letters being withdrawn by the organizations. Last November, Abhimanyu Gupta, an MBA student in New York University's Stern School of Business had landed a job offer from Bank of America's investment banking division. This February, the bank withdrew the offer and Gupta's world tumbled down just like the global markets. Now, the 27-year-old chartered accountant, who left his home Mumbai in 2007 to become an investment banker in the world's financial capital, plans to return home if he doesn't get an offer by June when his course ends. Gupta concedes that his chances of finding similar job in the U.S., which is battling the worst downturn in decades, are bleak, reports The Economic Times. Universities like the Harvards, Whartons, NYU Sterns, Kelloggs, MIT Sloans, Michigans and Dukes - the dream destinations of students till the other day - no longer guarantee top-dollar jobs. One year of downturn has turned the students' world upside down. A recent study by the University of California, Berkeley, says that almost 84 percent of Indian students and 76 percent of Chinese students in the U.S. think it will be difficult to find a job in their field in the country. Even lenders are tightening the noose on international students. First-year MBA students, who were relying on loans from U.S. banks to fund their second-year expenses, are in trouble because the banks have stopped lending to international students without co-signers. Now, most Indian students in the West are betting on their home country. "Not getting an offer there, they are looking homewards. Given the economic health of the U.S., India seems a better option right now," says Brijtendu Sarkar, Chief Restructuring Officer at Birla VXL, who did his MBA in general management for senior professionals from London Business School (LBS) last year. The U.S. economy shrank 6.1 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of 2009, following a 6.3 percent decline in the last quarter of 2008. A recovery is unlikely before the end of the year even in a best-case scenario.

siliconindia