India wooing foreign students to India |
Indian Union education ministry, along with IITs and top academicians, are exploring ways to attract foreign students to institutions of higher education in India. These include asking foreign faculties to develop short-duration courses; devising ways to showcase the return on investments; coordinating with Indian embassies; and joint branding and marketing of India`s higher education sector. During an internal deliberation at IIT Kharagpur, higher education secretary Amit Khare called for increasing the reach to foreign students through online education and also suggested that foreign faculties` expertise can be used to create short-term courses of one to two semesters. For this, India can leverage foreign faculties` network under the education ministry`s Global Initiative of Academic Network (GIAN) and Scheme for Promotion of Academic and Research Collaboration (SPARC) initiative. Under GIAN, the ministry allows top varsities to invite renowned foreign academicians to come and teach at Indian institutions for short durations, while SPARC promotes joint research. Foreign students often opt for short-term courses instead of long commitments due to the uncertain factor of the cost of education. Top officials of the education ministry, university vice chancellors, directors at IITs and academicians of global repute deliberated on India`s way forward on foreign students and how to sync this with the new education policy (NEP), to be rolled out next year. India is currently home to nearly 48,000 international students, which it aims to grow to 200,000 over a period of time.
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