Degrees of desperation

Students on the campus of Jamia Millia Islamia, a public university in Delhi. India has roughly 550 public universities, but only about a tenth are considered elite. — Showkat Nanda/The New York Times

KNOWLEDGE Park 3, part of an education hub in northern India, was built on a promise that a college degree could lift young Indians into the middle class.

But for many of the roughly 100,000 students drawn to this cluster of private colleges and universities, two hours from central New Delhi, it delivers something else: debt and disappointment.