Abroad Degree with Indian Government Loan !!

The Student Who Took a ₹60 Lakh Loan for a Foreign Degree and Regretted It

In 2024, a middle-class student from India took an education loan of ₹60 lakhs to pursue a master’s degree in the US…

Everyone around him said it was a great investment. “Once you graduate, you’ll earn in dollars,” they said…

Two years later, reality hit hard.

The job market had slowed down, and visa restrictions made it tough to find high-paying employment. The only jobs available paid just enough to cover rent and food. His monthly loan EMI in India was ₹80,000, but he was barely saving ₹20,000 a month abroad…

Now, he’s stuck - returning to India means lower salaries, making loan repayment even harder. Staying in the US means living paycheck to paycheck for years…

The lesson?

A number of students blindly assume that any foreign degree guarantees high earnings. But the reality is that job markets fluctuate, visa rules change, and not every degree has an equal return on investment.

That’s why I recommend the following:

1/ Carefully calculate the ROI (Return on Investment) of your degree before taking a massive loan. A high-cost degree doesn’t always mean high earnings.

2/ Consider alternative paths - scholarships, assistantships, or even lower-cost universities with strong placement records.

3/ Don’t fall for the “foreign degree = automatic success” myth. Research job prospects, industry demand, and visa policies before making a decision.

A degree is an investment - make sure it’s one that actually pays off

This is really something that every aspiring international student in India must understand. Unless the masters is done from a very good university abroad, it is not at all worth it! The very sad part is that young students (especially those from non-finance/non-commerce backgrounds) are not in a position to understand all these calculations of ROI and parents do not want to discourage their children from studying abroad due to the fear of killing their dreams or opportunities. This, accompanied by herd mentality and the prospective false pride of a foreign degree, doesn't make them think twice before taking an education loan. The only people profiting out of this whole eco-system are unscrupulous education and VISA agents. 

Our guys have a lot of clarity about education.  We picked up a course only when there was a scholarship i.e., someone paid us to learn. But the aim in doing such a course was to be scholars;  and scholarship amount was a nudge, in that direction. 

Sometimes we earned the scholarship without actually becoming scholars and that was the paradox of our times. 

Now, you are investing borrowed money to gain scholarship, and your paradox arises, when the said scholarship does not raise up to the investment and lands you in balance of payments problem. 

So, you think you are wise enough to choose the kind of wisdom you'd like to buy, and eventually gain the wisdom that wasting money on wisdom was not really a great choice?

my opinion, spending your money on education will never go in vain. Actually with the education you get from one of the first world countries, the amount of experience and exposure that is gained will be vastly superior and it will be an eye opener of sorts. Hence it is imperative to look on the brighter side and devise a better strategy to make use of the experience and exposure to convert it into monetary gains.

I say, its worth it, and a life lesson! We never gained that wisdom back then, and assumed that the scholarship was all about knowing stuff. Apparently, it is not - it's all about wisdom!