Strategy for Indian students aspiring for US education

For Indian students aspiring to go to America, a top U.S. official in the city at the head of a delegation of officials from 21 universities has useful advice to offer. “The best part of the U.S. university system is that you have a wide range of courses and pricing options to choose from, so first educate yourself about what you want and what options are best suited to your career goals,” says Suresh Kumar, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Trade Promotion and Director-General, US & Foreign Commercial Service.

The U.S. has 14 of the top 20 universities in the world listed across respected independent surveys, so there’s no doubt about the quality of the education you’ll get, but you’ve got to choose right to get the most out of the system. An alumnus of St Columba’s, Delhi University and the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Sciences, Mumbai, and a former journalist, Kumar should know the aspirations of Indian students better than his peers back home in America. His daughter is a Harvard graduate and a Rhodes scholar; his son studied at Stanford. And he has held top executive positions, including president of Johnson & Johnson’s worldwide consumer pharmaceuticals division, as well as done stints in academia, besides being the Thunderbird School of Global Management’s Distinguished Executive in Residence.

As you’d expect of a first-generation immigrant success story and father of two highly qualified young people, Kumar chalks out a strategy for applying to U.S. universities. He does it by giving an example from an area he’s familiar with — MBA programmes. “If you study business, choose a specialisation according to your interest, skill sets and potential,” he says. Of course, everyone dreams of going to Harvard Business School or to Standford, but their intake rate is 13 per cent and 7 per cent respectively of all the applications filed in a particular year, Kumar points out. So, before applying, do your research and find out which programme is best for your area of interest. If you, for instance, are in love with the idea of counting beans for the rest of your life and making piles of money early on in life, it won’t help your career track if you enroll for an MBA programme that’s prepares its students to become marketing whiz kids. Kumar calls it “understanding the price benefit”. He would recommend Thunderbird, which is in Glendale, Arizona, for students interested in the area of global management.

But Kumar isn’t in the country to offer free career advice. The delegation of 21 universities he’s leading represents what he describes as the “width of choice” that the American system offers. Their visit coincides with the U.S.- Indian Higher Education Summit in Washington, D.C. between HRD minister Kapil Sibal and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. India students, whose numbers added up to a little less than 105,000 last year, represent 15 per cent of the international student population on American campuses.

In 2010, however, they were dislodged from the No. 1 position by their Chinese peers, whose number has gone up to 127,000. To Indian students, Kumar’s message is to check out undergraduate options in the United States; to the government, he points to the impending need gap in higher education — if by 2015 we achieve the 15 per cent gross enrollment ratio target set by Sibal for higher education, then the infrastructure in place can absorb only 28 million of the 33 million students who will seek admission into undergraduate programmes. “We are here to fill up at least a part of the gap,” says Kumar, his words echoing the sentiments of the delegation that’s come here with great expectations.

Source: Mail Today, October 11, 2011

Obama tasks an Indian to sell US colleges

Suresh Kumar’s passage to the United States and its citizenship was different from the standard route. A former Doordarshan newscaster – a contemporary of Salma Sultan and Kabir Bedi – Kumar, an alumnus of Delhi’s Hindu College, studied management in Mumbai and worked his way through Greece, Indonesia, Singapore and Canada before coming to the US in the 1980s to teach at Thunderbird School of Management and Rutgers University. “So my model is a little different,” he muses, “most people come to US to study and then go to India to teach.”

Early next week though, Kumar will travel to India to hawk the virtues of an American education system of which he was not a beneficiary but is now certifiably an expert. As the US Assistant Secretary of Commerce and Director General of the US and Foreign Commercial Service, he is one of the Obama administration’s highest ranked Indian-Americans, a spectacular rise in government. Tasked now with leading a Department of Commerce Education Industry Trade Mission to India, he is also pointman for an education export initiative that will take 21 US colleges and universities to New Delhi, Chennai, and Mumbai to connect US educational institutions to potential Indian students and universities.

Not that US education system needs much salesmanship in India. For nearly a decade, India among all countries has been sending to the US the highest number of students, whose population is now upwards of 105,000. But the inflow has tailed off during the last year, and China has retaken the lead. It’s a statistic that has furrowed some brows in both academia and government, considering that Indian students plow in more than $ 2 billion annually into the US economy.

Why the Indian admissions are falling off is not quite clear. Indian students are certainly exploring other options such as Canada, Australia, UK and Europe, but anecdotal accounts suggest they could also be staying home for further studies, unsure whether forking out $ 100,000 for a US degree is worth it given the economic downturn and visa and immigration issues that have made headlines. If that is the case, then the US is quite happy to bring its education wares to India.

In any case, the developments coincide with President Obama’s National Export Strategy in which India is considered a ”priority market,” and selling education and technology to India is a key component. Kumar’s mandate is not just to attract more Indian students to study in America, but also lubricate the passage of US universities and schools to India, either directly, through collaboration, or even through distance education. A bill before the Indian parliament that enjoins US universities to reinvest their profits in India (and therefore bans repatriation) is not something that has thrilled Washington, but the US is looking at working around this issue, Kumar indicated in an interview on Wednesday.

While Kumar will be in India, India’s human resources minister Kapil Sibal will be in Washington DC parlaying with Hillary Clinton in what’s termed as the US-India higher education summit. Washington makes no secret of the fact that it considers education an industry and a commodity worthy of export initiatives (measuring ”India’s higher education market potential, estimated in the billions of dollars”) it also feels education is an integral part of the strategic partnership between the two countries ”because of its impact on fostering collaboration on critical issues that we face today.”

A Commerce Department brief ahead of Kumar’s visit notes that India aims to increase gross enrollment of high school graduates in higher education to 30 percent by 2020, which means almost tripling the enrollment from the present 14 million to 40 million. Presently, the Indian population in the relevant age group enrolled in a higher education course is more than that of Europe, USA, and Australia combined. The United States, whose leadership in education is still unquestioned, is well-positioned to help India reach its higher education enrollment goals, the report notes. As a small benefit, it will also bump up US trade figures with India, which are sharply lower than its figures vis-a-vs China.

Source: The Times of India, October 7, 2011