NEWARK, N.J. — Satish Viswanath has been working on prostate cancer research at Rutgers University in New Jersey since coming to the United States in 2006 from his native Mumbai. When the 28-year-old completes his Ph.D. in biochemical engineering later this year, he plans to forgo a job in the U.S., where his chosen field is well-established, and return to India, where such research is still nascent.
“The more I work over here, and interact with scientists over here, I realize there’s no reason India can’t be more active,” Viswanath says. “I should try and go back at a point when I can contribute more.”
Most graduate students from India who are studying in the United States are like Viswanath and would prefer to return home and contribute to their own country, according to a study released this week.
The survey by Rutgers University, Pennsylvania State University and the India-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences found only 8 percent of the 1,000 Indian graduate students polled say they would strongly prefer to remain in the U.S. after completing their studies. The rest either planned to return to India after some work experience abroad or were undecided.
A study co-author, B. Venkatesh Kumar, is a political science professor at the Mumbai-based Tata Institute who is on a yearlong fellowship at Penn State. He says the findings mark a major shift in perspective among Indians studying abroad.
“We’ve seen a trend of these students thinking about India and looking at opportunities in India,” Kumar says. “It’s been a significant change in attitude, given the changes in India, its rise as an economic power, and with it, this willingness to go back and help develop it into a knowledge society.”
The study’s authors say its findings and recommendations could be useful for Indian government officials as they debate higher education reforms and seek to recruit 1 million new faculty members toward their goal of offering higher education to 20 percent of India’s young people by 2020.
