Before you make an investment in your future – it could be an investment of time, money or effort – you need to know that it will pay off. In many fields, evaluating the quality of an investment is not an easy task. However, in the case of a Graduate degree abroad, it is much easier – all one needs to do is look at the demand market for qualified, skilled professionals in any field in the world.

Every indicator of demand for these professionals says the same things: there is a very high demand even now, the perks of these careers are great, and the demand will keep growing for the foreseeable future. The year on year growth rate of this Job Market will outstrip the GDP of most countries.

This makes the option of applying to a Graduate Degree abroad a no brainer, in case you are thinking of higher studies. Data shows that the best career options – either within a company, or on your own – come by as a result of completing a graduate course of study outside India. Here’s our latest Jamboree in depth feature, on the job market for foreign graduates – where we seek to show why it is so fundamentally strong, and growing in the right direction:

India’s economy is growing quickly, and will pick up a further head of steam

From all the latest projections of India’s economic future that have been doing the rounds in budget season, we are likely to be back to a 7-8% GDP growth rate very soon, and there are even rumours of a double digit growth rate some time in the near future. Many analysts are confident that India will enter a long, stable period of prosperity comparable to that of China a couple of decades ago, and that we will use this to create jobs, innovate and manufacture.

And this increase will be driven by the skilled; from being a largely manpower hub (for example, during the BPO and KPO booms) we will quickly move to being a skill hub. Where better to gain skills than in one of the top graduate programs in the world?

Some projections even state that India will surpass China and the USA to become the world’s largest economy by the year 2050 – in just 35 years. At that time, you will be a senior, respected professional – if you also have a foreign graduate degree, you could be one of the chosen few at the forefront of India’s pre-eminent place in the global economy! If we are almost a 100 trillion dollars in size, someone has got to make that happen!

We are largely insulated from market corrections

Even after the big crash of 2008, India was probably one of the economies that emerged best out of the meltdown – with responsible fiscal policies and cool headed fiscal leadership keeping us safe. Our conservative financial approaches going forward will likely mean that we will maintain our growth rate, and that the risk for becoming the world’s largest economy is low. 

This, in turn, means that there will be more jobs, and higher pay for the highly qualified. Basically, the investment you made in your graduate degree will pay itself back many times, and your risk profile will be minimized.

There will always be a vacuum at the top of any field

In India, there has always been a (largely unfulfilled) demand for really good experts. Whether you’re a Computer Scientist, a Mechanical Engineer, a Creative Writer, a Social Scientist, an Economics Specialist or an Agriculture Major, if you know your stuff, you can change the face of our country.

Sadly, there are not too many places you can become an expert at graduate level in India, and that number will not grow to keep pace with the exploding demand for more and more experts every year. In such a situation, we will see a large vacuum at the leadership level, and there will be calls to fill that vacuum with professionals who have seen best practices in other countries, learnt how they work, and are able to adapt these solutions to work in India.

Not only do you have job security and a growing range of choices in the future in India – with a graduate degree from abroad – but you also have your options growing as you grow more senior – something that is very rare indeed!

New fields of study will be created every year, and graduate students abroad will be the first to know of them

Not too long ago, there was a new discipline called Computer Science that a few universities in the US started offering. For a few years, it had only a few takers, but it suddenly exploded in popularity. We all know where it is today. Similarly with Biotechnology around the same time period, or with any one of a multitude of new, popular degrees today: the future is going to be filled with things that are new and untested today, and suddenly become the need of the hour.

In addition, that future will be scripted by people who were there at the beginning. Silicon Valley was fuelled by CS and Electrical Engineering grad students (and dropouts from Grad School) who used their initial training to create an entirely new reality. Even today, we might be in the first steps of a new revolution, and we cannot even see it yet because we are not at the epicentre.

The job market for a graduate abroad will be determined by new fields, and inter-disciplinary fields, which the world demands, in order to progress at the rate required. When you look at your potential careers post a Graduate Degree Abroad, you should not only keep in mind where current graduates of that degree go; add at least 50% for new vistas that will open up before your eyes, and help you use your degree in ways you never thought it could be.

The graduate degree mind set and way of thinking can ensure success in any field

With many degrees, you are confined to one channel of work, or one field of work, throughout your career. Graduate degrees from the top universities abroad are not like that; you can walk in to pretty much any job in the world, if you’re given enough time to make a plan. So, what is it, exactly, about these degrees that equips their holders to succeed pretty much anywhere?

Three big things set the top graduate programs in the world apart: they enforce rigour, expand horizons, and make responsibility essential. The first is clear: you will do many assignments, and work on many presentations – all of which have to be at a level of quality high enough to impress your Teaching Assistants and Professors. You will have to learn to be both swift and accurate. They expand horizons because, after you get to graduate school, you will learn about a hundred careers you never existed, learn a thousand things that make you a better professional, and grow your second degree network by a hundred thousand impactful individuals across the world.

These skills can be used in pretty much any industry, even those that do not have any surface connection to the subject of your major. For example, many of the top management and strategy consultants in the world have graduate degrees in fields entirely insulated from business management – for example, physical chemistry – and are able to succeed at the highest level only because the basic tools with which their graduate degrees equipped them were able to ensure success in their chosen fields. Pretty much any career which requires a very high degree of thinking and efficiency, and does not need too much prior context, is open to you – anywhere in the world!

Given that top graduates are always in demand, that means that your job market just expanded – from careers in your field and allied fields, to careers in a wide range of other professional areas.

In a more connected world, you could find your dream job in any one of a hundred and fifty different countries

Even today, your career options are a fresh graduate from a big name graduate program abroad are staggering – you could walk into any one of a thousand jobs, and do very well. And, as we discussed, the options are just going to grow in number, driven by a greater demand in a world struggling to come to grips with the need to assure its teeming billions a better quality of life.

But there’s one factor that will definitely further expand your canvas of potential jobs that we have not discussed yet – one that will multiply your options by a factor of 5, at least. That is geography, and the fact that Web 2.0 has brought the professional culture of many countries much closer together. Even as recently as a decade ago, an Indian might not have been able to start a career in China immediately post a graduate degree in the US, and see as much success as he / she would in India. However, that is no longer true; top flight students with a graduate degree are in demand across the world, to solve the pressing infrastructural, policy and software problems of every country that can afford them.

With future trade agreements and international collaboration set to increase further, you will be able to work across geographies more easily, and always have access to work that you will love doing.

We hope that this Jamboree In Depth feature looking at job security, and proving that the holder of a good graduate degree from a university abroad, has been useful. Remember, you are working towards a lofty goal with huge potential benefits. Less than a year of hard work now can give you access to the best job market in the world, and ensure that your professional services are in demand in the world of the future, when high performing graduates becoming as precious as diamonds.

In case you want to know more about how exactly you can achieve your dreams, and start off on the path to becoming a high performing graduate, we invite you to get in touch with the Jamboree centre nearest to you, and book a counselling session with our expert coaches and advisors. Post that, we will be able to chart out a detailed plan for you, to maximize your career potential. We look forward to seeing you soon – all the best!