India’s Foreign Students Great Expectations Belied

In India’s 37,000 undergrad colleges and 744 universities — some of 150 years vintage — the number of foreign students aggregated a mere 66,885 in 2015, an almost 30 percent drop from 93,693 in 2013:  Summiya Yasmeen In an era when international student travel and exchanges have reached unprecedented heights — the US has an estimated 1.2 million students from around the world enrolled in its 4,726 universities and higher education institutions (HEIs), the UK 436,585 and China 397,500 — despite some of its HEIs being of almost 200 years vintage, India is a hopeless also ran. In 2015, the number of foreign students enrolled in the country’s 37,000 colleges and 744 universities aggregated a mere 66,885, an almost 30 percent drop from 93,693 in 2013, according to the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry. Within nexgen student communities around the world, there’s rising awareness of the newly emergent global marketplace facilitated by easy jet travel and unprecedented flow of international capital to emergent nations for high returns. But following decades of under-investment in education, India’s HEIs — none of them are ranked in the Top 100 World University Rankings of the London-based Times Higher Education and QS — are ill-equipped to attract foreign students. Heavily regulated by Central and state governments and plagued with outdated curriculums, faculty shortages, and offering abysmal infrastructure and residential accommodation, India’s institutions of higher education have been banished to the corners of radar screens of ambitious students around the world. Therefore, the great majority of foreign students who opt for relatively inexpensive higher education in India come from the developing nations of Afro-Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Yemen, etc) where HEIs are few and comparatively under-developed, and lack trained faculty. In 2014, a mere 3,737 students from developed countries — USA, Germany, France, South Korea, Australia, China and Singapore — enrolled in India’s institutions of higher education. Against this, there’s an annual migration of an estimated 169,000 students from India to universities and colleges abroad particularly in the US and UK, notwithstanding unimaginably high tuition fees, humiliating visa procedures and the prospect of ice-cold winters. In the US, Indian students (132,000) represent the second largest number of foreign nationality scholars. “Choosing study abroad destinations and institutions is based on several direct and indirect considerations. Among them is the perception of the destination country and its higher education institutions. Thus far, socio-political and economic factors have not been in favour of India. In sharp contrast, China’s HEIs have benefited from the Peoples Republic’s fantastic growth story and from policy and financial support of government. Indian higher education suffers from lack of focus on quality and an incoherent policy framework. The great majority of globally mobile students are searching for decent quality education at affordable price. India has immense potential to become a hub of students from Asia and Africa if it focuses on quality upgradation and evolves a transparent information dissemination policy for internationally mobile students,” says Dr. Rahul Choudaha, principal researcher…