The rising cost of college in America coupled with massive job cuts and an economy in recession means that it is becoming more difficult for American students to afford college tuition fees.  Meanwhile across the globe, the situation being not so dire, Asian students continue to apply to top American universities often paying high fees.

The New York Times quoted an annual report published by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, entitled Measuring Up saying that published college tuition and fees increased 439 percent from 1982 to 2007, adjusted for inflation, while median family income rose 147 percent. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last decade, and students from lower-income families, on average, get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

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In the wake of proposals to cap London financial services bonuses, battered city banks may spark an exodus of top London fund management talent to higher paying positions in Shanghai, Mumbai and Dubai, the Guardianreported.

The British Government has warned it will be looking at ways to curb the bonuses of city banks, especially now in this weeks Us$86 billion bailout, many of them now have the Government as a de facto shareholder. However, over 4,000 city employees earned in excess of US$1.7million in the year to date, and attempts to curb this may lead to an exodus of city talent, warn bosses. Board directors pay appears in the public accounts and can easily be spotted. But other executives also earn high salaries – Barclays head of their Middle East operations, John Jenkins, is reported to have earned US$24million last year. Even “lowly paid” traders in the city expect six figure bonuses.

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Violence has erupted in almost every part of Asia, overthrowing the old order and squashing out the opposition. Countries ranging from Pakistan, India, Afghanistan, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand and North Korea are all up in arms, fighting for justice and equality, at a time when inflation in the region has reached astronomical heights.

In Thailand, thousands of demonstrators besieged government offices on Tuesday and briefly shut down a television station in some of the most aggressive actions in months of street protests. While rebel fighting in the southern Philippines between government troops and Islamic separatists intensified with the number of the displaced now reaching 300,000, officials and aid workers the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Further, asserting their stance in world politics, North Korea said Tuesday that it had stopped disabling its main nuclear complex and threatened to restore facilities there that the North had used to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons unless the United States removed it from a terrorist list. (more…)

For years, young, talented, well educated individuals left India, China, Dubai and Hong Kong to pursue better, more rewarding careers in the west. However, now as the economies in the west stagnate, the children of this same highly educated talent pool are casting their eyes east, back home - to lands of high growth, opportunity and adventure.

A tightening American economy, Wall Street troubles and price increases are enticing many mangers to transfer from traditional financial centers like New York and London to increasingly influential hubs of finance in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America, regions where the banks have already been building up business to tap rising growth potential.

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The world is flat when it comes to inflation. As oil exceeded US$139/barrel, in the last week, truckers across Asia and Europe protested. The strikes arrested transportation links that bring food to people, leaving many more in the lurch.

Exerpts from a Reuters report say - In Asia, governments are struggling to prevent rising prices making the burden on the public so heavy that it threatens political stability.

South Korea’s cabinet offered to resign in the face of huge street protests on Tuesday about the policies of its unpopular President Lee Myung-bak.

He said Asia’s fourth-largest economy could be heading into crisis because of surging resource prices and slowing growth. Producer price inflation in the world’s fifth-largest crude oil importer was near a 10-year high last month.

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Amongst the several thousands of victims of last weeks Sichuan earthquake are also many Indian medical students. The frightened students have been�asking�the university to help them return home and postpone their exams due in June.

The Indian embassy estimates that there are approximately 6,000� Indian students studying medicine in China. They come to China as a cheaper option to the U.S or U.K. due to the limited availability of seats in medical universities in India. With the medium of instruction in English, the deal is a win-win situation. Many students also say that the quality of medical educaton in China is ahead of India. Besides the privilege of living abroad, the students enjoy learning Chinese. A majority of the students goto medical universities in Tianjin or Hangzhou.

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After almost a year of negative growth, India’s textile and clothing�industry’s exports to the U.S.�grew by 8.26 percent in February this year, even as exports from China, the largest textile and clothing�exporter to the U.S. (worth $32.3 billion or a third of US� total T&C imports in 2007) slowed down registering a negative growth (-2.57%) in exports to the US in Jan-Feb 2008.

So what has led to this flux�in�the global�T&C business?��it�s a repeat of history say analysts. In its evolution, the global textile industry has seen continual shifting of its base. As the economy grows beyond a level, it becomes unfit for the labour-intensive T&C sector. It happened earlier with Japan, and even earlier with the U.S. and EU .

Now, it�s China�s turn to cut its textile industry. And for other competitive textile producers like India, Vietnam and Indonesia, this is an opportunity. In India�s case, this is true for the next two decades at least (before it also finds textile production incompatible with the economy) reported The Economic Times.

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According to statistics issued yesterday by the Japanese External Trade Organisation (Jetro) http://www.jetro.go.jp/, the combined per capita income of ASEAN countries Burma, Brunei, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Phillipines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam for 2007 was USD7,533, against just USD2,459 for China. This represents a rise from USD6,830 for 2006, an extraordinary increase for a diverse total population also larger than China’s at @1.6 billion people against 1.2 billion for the PRC.

This reflects the continuing growth rate and prosperity in the region, with major consequences for FDI throughout Asia. The regions diversity is also displayed, with tiny Brunei and Singapore leading the way in incomes, far beyond their Asian counterparts, over USD32,000 a head. At the opposite end of the scale however, Burma, Cambodia , Laos, Vietnam and India all recorded average per capita income of less than USD1000 per annum, although all showed significant growth rates as well. Of those closest to China’s level of GDP income, Thailand exceeded it and Indonesia was close behind China.

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For years, every summer young Indians and Chinese fly west to greener pastures in search of a more lucrative job. “India is no place to make money, earn your money abroad, then come back to India to retire,” was the advice I got from the older and wiser.

Now however, it seems the tables are turning, a lack of skilled employees, high attrition rates and a booming realty market means that Indian and Chinese salaries are registering double digit growth, - for 5 consecutive years now. Salaries in corporate India are set to rise at the fastest pace in the world this year. Salaries rose 15.1% last year, one of the highest in the world and the highest in the Asia-Pacific region - the sector doling out the most moolah was Realty, according to human resources consulting firm Hewitt Associates. Of the different strata in a company, junior management and professionals have recieved the highest rise.

Hewitt’s statitics for China show similar double digit growth. China’s highest salary jump was in 2006, when increments rose 7% to 9%in tier one cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and and by 7.5% to 10.6% in tier two cities - Chengdu, Sichuan, Hangzhou and Zhejiang and Wuhan.

Will the rise in salary lead to India and China’s diminishing competitive advantage? or will it lead to a flood of reverse brain drain?

Recruiting the right talent is every becoming every HR manager’s nightmare. AS Asia faces a talent crunch in the face of growing competition, we find India might just emerge ahead of China.

A recent report by Mc Kinsey says that - India is not only producing more young professionals, it is producing better qualified ones, too. According to a survey of local recruiters, only 10 percent of China engineers have the skills necessary to work in a multinational corporation, compared to 25 percent of engineers in India. By 2008, India’s total pool of qualified graduates will be more than twice as large as China. If Indian universities continue to churn out top-notch talent, its younger, cheaper, and larger professional workforce could help India edge out its neighbor to the east.

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Source: Mckinsey Global Institute