Right for parents, wrong for kids

NEW DELHI: When it comes to choosing a career, parents still want their children to don the white coat.
"Going to phoren" craze is down with lot of career options now available in India.
Most parents want their children to go abroad just for short-term post-graduate courses and then come back and settle," says career counsellor Parveen Malhotra.
For undergraduate courses, only a select few go, as it comes out to be very costly with no scholarships available at that level," she says.
Though many new professions like IT and technology have come up, most parents still want their kids to be doctors. It is the top-ranked profession and also very respectable, according to parents and elders," says Malhotra.
Most elders do not see the newly emerging professions to be very secure. For them, being a doctor or engineer is very respectable and also earning.
It''s not just India, even in America, the latest career advice elders are giving to youth is to take up medicine.
A new poll conducted in US shows that most adults say they would recommend to young men and women to be an MD.
The April telephone survey asked around 1000 adults what they would recommend to young men and women seeking career advice.
One in five said they would advise young men to become doctors and 17 per cent said they would recommend the medical profession to young men, says the survey report, published on a medical website.
That makes "doctor" the top-ranked profession, ahead of careers in computers, technology, teaching or business, the survey says.
Career counsellors, however, say poll results are surprising since in America, hardly...
... anyone wants to be a doctor.
"The profession involves lot of hard work and dedication, and is dissuaded by almost every youth in America," says Malhotra.
But in India, she says a doctor or an engineer is considered very respectable and also earning profession.
Most of the parents are also not very comfortable with careers like armed forces, which is not very paying in terms of money.
However, lot of parental advice also depends on the field from which the parents come," says Malhotra noting civil services also remains a very respected profession.
Also, the parental advice differs from city to city. It cannot be generalised. It is different in Delhi where IT and computers are respected but in smaller towns, government job and banking is still considered very ''secure''.
But asked, what the youth here preferred, Malhotra says "IT, computers, call centres top the list, followed by enginnering, medical, law and media."
While 20 years back, every girl wanted to be a teacher, today it is the last choice for them.
However, she says "beggars can''t be chosers. In the end you have to grab whatever you get in India, as the number of students is much more than the seats available in professional colleges."