Many Indian parents are obsessed with their kids studying engineering and MBAs and being successful in their careers, says a new study.
A new global survey by HSBC Retail Banking and Wealth Management found out that in India, 23 percent parents want their children to be engineers and 22 percent want them to be MBAs.
The report called 'The Value of Education: Learning for Life', spoke to parents from many countries across the world and the findings were fascinating. Chinese parents give priority to the health of their children (72%) while in US and Canada they think their kids being happy are most important.
In many emerging economies, parents hope for their children to be successful in their career almost as strongly as they do for them to be happy in life, the study showed. 
So in India, parents want their kids to be successful in their careers (51%) more than even having a happy life (only 49% wanted that for their kids). Even health is a relatively lower concern for Indian parents.
The study further found that a job in engineering is the most preferable for almost a fifth of parents in Brazil (18%), Malaysia (18%), the UAE (16%) and Mexico (16%), compared to just 5% of parents in Australia, Singapore and Taiwan. 
Parents in India – a country renowned for its emerging technology sector – are more than twice as likely as the average to want their children to go into a job in computer science.
Making a difference to society is important to two in five (38%) parents in Indonesia and to just under a quarter (22%) of parents in Turkey and India. To get their sought-after careers, 88% Indian parents feel that postgraduate or masters degree is important, While 91% are happy with undergraduate courses.
An interesting find by the study was related to additional tutoring. The study said 74% of Chinese parents would not mind paying for additional tutoring for their children. India and Indonesia tie for the second place with 71%.
The desire for children to achieve the highest possible academic qualifications is strongest in the UAE, where a third (33%) of parents say this is an important goal for their children, as it is for parents in Malaysia (29%) and India (28%).
Parents were also found to more likely to want their daughters to go into medicine (22%) than they are for their sons (15%). They are, however, more likely to want their sons to go into engineering (15%, compared to 6% for daughters) or computer science (10%, compared to 5% for daughters).
This is true regardless of parents’ own gender, the study further added.
Many parents think students work too hard and so are concerned their children do not have enough time to develop the softer skills they need to succeed in the job market. In Asia and the Middle East, this imbalance is particularly pronounced. In the UAE, 39% of parents think their child spends too much time on independent study at university, compared to only 5% who think they do not spend enough time. There is also a wide gap in Indonesia (36% compared to 10%), Singapore (30% compared to 10%), India (29% compared to 17%) and Hong Kong (42% compared to 26%).
In contrast, parents in France are more likely to think their child does not spend enough time on independent study at university (30%).

Key findings

 64% of parents say that being happy in life is one of the most important goals they have for their child, compared to only 30% who say career success.

83% of parents have a specific occupation in mind for their child, with medicine (19%), engineering (11%) and computer science (8%) the most popular.

79% of parents see an undergraduate degree or higher qualification as essential to their child achieving important goals in their life, and 50% think a postgraduate degree (master’s or higher) is necessary.

58% of parents would most like their child to study one of the following five degree subjects: medicine; business, management and finance; engineering; computer and information sciences; or law.

39% of parents have paid for additional tutoring for their child at primary school stage, 44% at secondary school, and 23% at university.

66% of parents have sought advice about their child’s university education and, of these, 72% learned of new options they had not considered.

42% of parents think that a university education offers poor value for money.

Parents who think they will borrow money to fund their child’s university costs expect to be paying it off on average for 6.7 years after their child graduates, and expect their child to be paying off their own university debt for 7.5 years.

77% of parents would consider sending their child to study at university abroad and, of these, 24% would be willing to pay at least half as much again, compared to the cost of educating their child in their home country.

58% of parents think that a university education is unaffordable for the majority of people in their country.

72% of parents with a pre-primary school child think they will save up to cover their future university costs; however, only 53% of those with a child at university are funding their contribution from savings.

45% of parents think that enhanced confidence and social skills are the most valuable aspects of a university education in preparing students for life after graduation.