The global economic slowdown has significantly impacted entry-level job opportunities, say Indian-American students, educational consultants and professionals in the US. According to an ET report, they also claimed that the situation is made worse by the tendency of many companies to hire local students during the election year.
Enhance
Moreover, Indian students graduating from US universities this year face additional challenges, including high inflation rates, rising costs of living, local unemployment and sponsorship issues.
Indian students face competition
“There were approximately 400 final-year undergraduate students on the East and West Coasts, including the Ivy League schools I have advised over the years, who did not receive any internship offers this summer,” said Adarsh Khandelwal, co-founder educational consulting company Collegify.
Enhance
The Ivy League, a group of eight private universities located in the northeastern United States that includes prestigious institutions such as Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania, is renowned for academic excellence and social prestige.
According to Khandelwal, “Indians, even at top American universities such as NYU Stern, California at Berkeley, Brown University, University of Pennsylvania and University of Texas at Austin, are struggling. Many of these children have approached us, asking for support in getting placed in India.”
Khandelwal cited the example of a 22-year-old senior at Harvard University, majoring in economics and psychology, who was unable to secure a summer internship despite having applied to multiple companies over the past six months.
The current job market has proven challenging even for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students, who were in high demand before the Covid-19 pandemic. Technology, consulting and new-age companies are either laying off workers or imposing hiring freezes.
Khandelwal stated, “There are almost no jobs requiring basic coding skills unless there is an element of artificial intelligence (artificial intelligence) or novel technology.”
An Indian employee of a leading consulting firm, who wished to remain anonymous, revealed, “My company prefers to hire Americans rather than Indians.”
This situation persists even as US universities continue to attract international students, including from India, and the number of Indian students pursuing higher education in the United States has reached an all-time high.
