New Delhi: The Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management and Jawaharlal Nehru University will create 1,600 new seats this year for foreign students under the Study In India programme, launched on Wednesday.
Some 45,000 foreign students now receive higher education in India. Under the new initiative, 160 educational institutions have agreed to create another 15,000 seats for them this year. India is mainly targeting African and Asian overseas students.
The IITs will offer over 1,230 additional seats to foreign students, mostly for master's and research programmes, raising their overseas intake fourfold to six-fold. JNU will carve out 328 extra seats in undergraduate, master's and PhD courses.
So far, IIM Trichy is the only one among the premier B-schools to agree to raise its foreign student intake - by creating 30 more seats in its Postgraduate Diploma in Management course.
Among the IITs, the one in Delhi will create 447 additional seats for foreign students, followed by the institutes in Kanpur (229), Chennai (220), Mumbai (100), Bhubaneswar (95), Ropar (40), Gandhinagar (25), Patna (19) and Jodhpur (7). IIT-BHU will create 50 seats.
Among other elite institutions, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, will create 20 extra seats for foreign students in its MTech and PhD courses, while the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, will add 20 PhD seats.
IIT Delhi will offer some 219 new seats in its MBA course to foreign students, and 107 new ones in MTech.
One obstacle the IITs have been facing to any seats increase is their limited hotel berths. But IIT Delhi director Ramgopal Rao told The Telegraph the institute had recently entered into a collaboration with Coho, a start-up company that has been converting private houses in the Hauz Khas area into hostels.
The IIMs will admit foreign students with bachelor's degrees and at least 50 per cent marks. The equivalence of the degree has to be certified by the Association of Indian Universities. The candidates will be short-listed on the basis of their Graduate Management Admission Test score.
