Bharat's foreign education dream gets bigger but is coming at a cost

Dim job prospects at home, burden of collateral taking a toll on students from rural India

Naveen Kumar (name changed on request), a 20-year-old resident of Balasore district in Odisha, wanted to do master's in forensic science. Unable to make it to the National Forensic Sciences University, India’s premiere forensic college, in Gandhinagar (Gujarat), he decided to look for opportunities overseas. Short of money, his father, a retired government officer, had to place his pension certificate as collateral for Kumar’s education loan from a state-run bank.

“I would have obviously preferred to study in India but the opportunities in forensics are limited here. Even as a profession, forensic science is a nascent field,” Kumar says. So,