NEW DELHI: A senior IIT professor has questioned the government’s recently launched much hyped Study in India programme that aims to attract 2 lakh students from abroad to Indian institutes every year.
When 5.5 lakh Indian students are studying in other countries due to lack of sufficient number of quality institutes in the country, on what basis is the government expecting foreigners to come to India, the professor with IIT, Kanpur has asked in his blog on the subject.
Dheeraj Sanghi who teaches Computer Science has pointed out that while we have only 45,000 foreign students in India, more than 5.5 lakh Indians are studying abroad as per a Lok Sabha answer by the Government in August, 2017.
“Instead of 1.5 lakh foreigners, can we have a goal to attract 1.5 lakh of these back to Indian universities by 2023? I am convinced that if we can attract Indians to Indian universities, foreigners will also get attracted,” he has written.
The initiative, supported by the ministry of external affairs, was launched by the Union Human Resources Development Ministry last month and saw a one stop centre website being launched to guide foreigners interested in coming over to study in the country.
But pointing out that a large number of Indians choose to study abroad, Sanghi has opined that they do so because there aren't many good institutions in India.
“And therefore, those who didn't get admission to any of the few good quality institutions and could afford to study abroad, leave India. If we want to have 2 lakh foreigners, and if we assume that on an average our best institutions will have 5 percent foreign students within the next 5 years, it means that we must have good institutions with 40 lakh Indian students in them,” he has written.
“The entire IIT system is only 75,000 students (and I have no hope of IIT system having 5 per cent foreign students within 5 years),” the professor has also said.
Speaking to TNIE, Sanghi said that due to political situation in India, the emphasis has largely been on “access” rather than quality.
“There are 40,000 colleges in India but how many of them are good ones? I believe quality institutions be opened—whether in public or private sector—and government should subsidise studies, particularly to those belonging to poor students,” he said.
A senior HRD ministry official however said that the scheme was launched keeping in mind the need to advertise and publicise brand value of Indian institutions.