Will the US under President Joe Biden regain its status of the 'Promised Land' for higher education?
Two students are seen leaving their campus with baggage at Harvard University premises in Cambridge, MA, July 08, 2020.
Image: Anik Rahman/NurPhoto via Getty Images
In August 2020, Kahan Shah, 25, completed his Masters in Finance from Boston College, Massachusetts, and began scouring for a job. When he applied for one with the finance department of an ecommerce platform, Reibus International in Georgia, Gujarat-born Shah was screened primarily on the basis of his current immigration status. “I applied to this one company, where they liked my application and I passed the preliminary screening process, but even before setting up the interview they enquired about my current immigration status and dropped me as they weren’t ready to provide sponsorship,” says Shah, who is on an F-1 student visa and would have required sponsorship for transferring to H-1B status.
“Where earlier a degree from a good US university used to open up multiple opportunities of getting placed in the country, under the Trump administration, the process of finding employment was much harder. Even after having all the necessary qualifications and experience, and applying to multiple places, the chances of getting placed were slim,” adds Shah.
Cut to Acha Chitkara, a 23-year-old from Haryana, who after completing schooling in India, graduated in Economics from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in 2019. Chitkara is now set to pursue a Masters in Finance at Duke University, North Carolina from July 2021. “I’m looking forward to studying in the US under the current administration. I think President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will ease the immigration policies and visa restrictions, and that might make the US the first preference of Indian students,” says Chitkara.
Chitkara adds that many of his friends had deferred admission to American universities because of the political unrest during the Donald Trump administration. Their hope was that once Biden is elected to be president, they would renew their attempts for a seat in a US university.
A change in guard in the ‘Promised Land’ has once again made the US, which is home to over a fourth of the top 100 universities in the QS World University Rankings 2021, the preferred destination for higher education for Indians. The success of the American educational model has been apparent with a consistent rise in the number of international students opting to go there for higher studies till 2016.