On Wednesday, March 13, 2019, UK Chancellor Philip Hammond said that from later this year, highly qualified roles will be exempt from any visa restrictions. This implies that Ph-D level roles will be visa agnostic and any number of qualified individuals can work in the UK irrespective of their nationality. Indians are expected to be the most important beneficiaries of this move, expected to account for about 50% of such visa allocations.

Similar voices have been heard from other developed economies as well – Trump’s proposed H1B visa changes including raising of the minimum wages that such workers could draw imply that highly educated foreign workers would find ready employment in the US. For the longest time Germany and other major European economies have followed similar measures.

This is a welcome move, especially from the Indian perspective. Given the fact that many of the developed economies are facing negative population growth and skill shortages, something that Indians have in ample measure, it represents an excellent opportunity for Indians to export highly educated and skilled workers. Right now, most of these workers appear to be in Science/Tech fields but we expect this to change very soon. This is also in line with the overall macro-economic change wherein globalization of work-force is expected to be the next major driver of global growth. Capital globalization has already reached extensive proportions, and now wider availability of high-quality labor is expected to turbo-charge the next phase of development.

UK has also said that by 2021, they will completely remove a cap on migration of skilled workers. This step is broadly in that direction and has been hailed by most people in a very positive way. The timeline is especially relevant in the context of current students/ or those who are planning to study in the UK over the next few years. This means that by the time you graduate from a UK college, you are ready to be absorbed in the local work-force – something which is considered preferable to coming back to India in search for jobs. It is expected that the ensuing skilled-worker migration will be the medicine that shall bring the ailing UK-economy back to its growth-phase.

In this quest for better jobs, please beware that getting into any college should not be your aim. Any tier-2 college is a strict no! You should only gun for the top colleges and try to get quality education. Names like LBS, Imperial, Cambridge, Oxford should be the ones that you should focus upon. Clearly, this implies that you should work hard towards getting an admission in these highly-selective institutions. Contrary to widely-held belief, getting into a top-college in UK is extremely hard. Your success is predicated on years of hard work which showcase not just your grades but also a unique profile which embodies your unique personality and motivation to study. A typical good profile gets built over a number of years – so irrespective of whichever grade you are in, start working towards sharpening it. As you build your profile, you shall also get a good sense of the jobs that you want to do in future – which in turn would help you choose the programs/ subjects that you would want to major into.

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