Anjuli Bhargava: Overseas degree and job - Double or quits?

The question middle-class parents in India are facing is whether it is worthwhile to invest a big amount in a degree that may or may not translate into a career and a secure future

The other day a friend of mine called. He wanted advice - or perhaps just an ear - on what to do with his only child who had finished his Class 12 examinations last year and had got a mid-80s percentage - too low to get into one of Delhi's premier colleges but high enough to enrol in some course somewhere. He had taken a gap year to decide his next course of action and applied to universities overseas. The boy had recently gained admission for a liberal arts degree at a mid-level institution in the US. My friend would, however, sell a property - a flat in Gurgaon near Delhi and the only other he owned besides the one they live in - to pay for the four-year degree that would cost close to Rs 1.5 crore (all expenses accounted for).

His dilemma was two-fold. One, is it worth it to sell off property (his wife doesn't earn) to finance a degree today when degrees seem to be losing their sheen to an extent? Evidence of companies - and employers - putting less and less emphasis on the degree one held was coming in. Both in the US and in India, companies are less enamoured with the stamp you had acquired and more with how you got the job done.

Then, there appears to be a glut of graduates the world over. A degree no longer guarantees a highly paid job nor the career path you would find satisfying or challenging. There are several graduates - especially with liberal arts degrees - in the US, many of who have loans to pay back with no jobs in hand. A number of them are back and living at home, a rare development for the US where children are often gone from parental homes once they leave high school.

In India, too, the number of graduates coming back armed with degrees from fancy institutions - from all over the world - is piling up. Almost all of us will know students, who left the country after schooling and are now back in India with undergraduate degrees for one reason or the other. Few seem to have a clear direction of where they are headed but all had rejected the American way of life, refusing to stay back and be sucked into a life of "money, materialism and mortgages" as one of them put it to me.

But there's a host of reasons for this - not necessarily disheartening. In some cases, the students have tried working in the States for a while but had either got disillusioned with what they were doing or had not found jobs up to their expectations. At least two of them I know - both of whom had very high paying jobs with consultancy firms - said they were looking for more "meaningful" stuff to do and soon realised the Western work environment didn't always offer that. Just the pay package wasn't enough to hold them down.

There's a large and growing body of young 23-28-year-olds who feel they'd rather contribute to their own country and do something here rather than slog it out in an alien environment. They are mostly from a privileged background in India, have no education loans (parents have put together the money to finance their degrees somehow) and are keen to be a part of India's growth story. They don't mind the risk, the challenge and don't fear the hard work they know they will have to put in to succeed in India. The start-up story attracts them and they are keen to join the bandwagon.

But there's another interesting nugget here. None of the students I know are willing to exchange their overseas education for anything. The degree they had received was just a stamp; the experience was invaluable and priceless. Despite it being just four years, many feel it has moulded them into what they are today.

Coming back to my friend's story, here's what he was pondering - and it's something an increasing number of Indian parents I reckon will ponder over - given the fact that the days are over when a degree from overseas was a passport to success and happiness.

Is it worthwhile for him to dish out this kind of money for an experience that may or may not translate into a career and a secure future? Will his son's future be remarkably different if he graduates from one of India's unremarkable institutions? Should he leave him to float and find his way? In an increasingly uncertain world, does anyone have the answers?