A 26-year-old US woman on Reddit sparked a debate online after her concerning post about the rising number of Indian students pursuing master's degrees at US universities could be a ‘scam’.

The Reddit user who joined a masters course in CS last year claimed that 99% of students in the programme were Indians.

She added that her Indian classmates admitted to getting a master’s degree in hopes it would be easier to get a visa and a job in the US.

“I have since gotten a job in Data Science—but mainly through a connection after months and months of searching,” she wrote.

“I kind of feel like it’s going to be hard for all of these kids to get jobs in the us—it’s already hard for American kids,” she added.

The user is alarmed about a prospective ‘scam’ that the Indian students are falling victim to.

She also complained about the classroom etiquette and behaviour of Indian students when the professor was in lecture. “They are LOUDLY talking while the professor is,” she wrote.

The post got over 800 reactions and 594 upvotes on Reddit.

“Indians don’t come to study, they come to settle. Do you think people who sell land and get bank loans are coming to study? Their end goal is to get settled in America. A study visa is the cheapest yet one of the successful options for Indians to get into the US as compared to other visas which are costly (business visa),” wrote a user.

Another user commented, “If Indians constituted 99% of your class, then the college must be the lowest ranked one—one of those scam colleges that only exist to extort money from foreign students. It’s true that a lot of Indians spend money to get into such colleges just to immigrate to America. This is happening in Canada and Australia as well.”

“Yes, this is a total scam. I need to sell my properties in India to repay the loan amount. Because no job for the last 5 months and no payment on Optional Practical Training,” commented a user.

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