Government launches Study in India programme to attract foreign students

The Ministry of Human Resources Development (HRD) has approved ‘Study in India’ programme to attract foreign students to pursue higher education in India. Government has approved expenditure of Rs. 150 crores for programme for two years 2018-19 and 2019-20 which will be primarily for brand promotion activities.

Study in India programme

Objectives

• Encourage more foreign students to choose India as destination for higher education.
• Double India’s market share of global education exports from less than 1% to 2%.
• Improve global ranking of Indian educational institutes.

Features
The programme will provide meritorious foreign students fee waiver and scholarship. The proposed fee waiver and scholarship will be decided by institute concerned based on the predefined structure. The institutes concerned will bear expenditure on fee waiver based on cross-subsidisation or through its existing funding.
Under it, 100% waiver of tuition fees will be only for the top 25% students, 50% waiver of tuition fees only for the next 25% students, 25% waiver of tuition fees only for the next 25% students and no waiver of tuition fee for remaining 25% of students. The programme will not affect number of seats which are meant for Indian students in any educational institute.

Background

In past couple of years, premier Indian institutes have not featured in top 100 in any of global rankings. One of the reasons is that global rankings also consider number of foreign faculty and foreign students studying in educational institute. In Times Higher Education Ranking 2018, top spot has gone to University of Oxford where 38% population is of Indian students. On contrary, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru has only 1% population of International students. As per existing Government framework, there is provision of 10-15% supernumerary seats for foreign students in educational institutes.

Month: Current Affairs - March, 2018