(From top) Michelle Fernandes, Deeksha Sharma and Shweta Sinha

Oxford, June 15: Three gifted postgraduate Indian students at Oxford — Michelle Fernandes, Deeksha Sharma and Shweta Sinha — have told The Telegraph that on coming to the university, they were confronted with the strengths and weaknesses of the educational system in India.

The students found they had acquired plenty of knowledge but perhaps had not been encouraged sufficiently to think for themselves.

The three women are academic high-fliers but their sobering indictments have come as Oxford holds an ambitious “India Day” on Friday to deepen the university’s links with India.

“The amount of background knowledge Indian students have sometimes has been forced upon them,” says Michelle, 26, who is of Goan origin, studied medicine in Bangalore and is now at Exeter College doing a DPhil on how depression during pregnancy can permanently ruin the lives of poor rural women and their children.

“We collect a lot of dots but we are not taught how to join them,” she adds. “Oxford has helped me to blossom even more.”

If India is to break through in research and with scientific invention and innovation, it will require a junking of its system of learning by rote, the students feel.

Deeksha, 25, who is from Delhi and is doing a law PhD specialising in how the international system of taxation is biased in favour of developed countries and against countries such as India, agrees: “The education system we come from is very different from the education system here.”

According to Deeksha, who is also at Exeter College, “the tutorial system is not there (in India), where you write an essay and discuss it one-on-one with your tutor. Here, it is about why you think somebody is wrong or somebody is right. That form of analysis we don’t have in the Indian education system. It is the knowledge that counts — who said what.”

Deeksha goes on: “Here the emphasis is on taking it to a level beyond. ‘I read this article written by you, Mr Professor, but I don’t agree with the position that you took and I don’t agree because.....’ This (attitude) is completely new to us. Oxford is beyond what I thought it would be. Oxford offers those opportunities but you should also be ready to grab those opportunities and make the most of them.”

Shweta, 27, who is at Merton College doing a DPhil on the biochemistry of how bacteria are able to move, says: “Oxford is a wonderful place, I think, especially because I come from Allahabad and I have not lived in any of the big cities in India. The way they focus on your studies and the way they nurture your extra-curricular activities is very good. I have so much freedom — in India, a student is in a completely different situation. Your supervisors are your bosses — here it is more of a friendly thing where I can talk and discuss and do things on my own.”

Leading Indian business houses, academics and personalities have been invited for the “India Day”, which will include scholarly presentations in several disciplines, a cricket match, a concert and a reception at the Ashmolean Museum.

“I hope, at least, it’s a sign of intent,” said Lord Chris Patten, the university’s chancellor, who recalls the cricketing Nawab of Pataudi was his senior by two years at Balliol.

Pataudi, later to marry Sharmila Tagore, followed his father to Balliol, as did eventually his own daughter, Soha Ali Khan, who acted alongside Patten’s daughter, Alice, in Rang De Basanti.

Patten points out that Oxford’s engagement with India goes back 400 years and that Indian students, who include Indira Gandhi, have been coming to the university since 1871. There are currently 363 students, mostly postgraduates, from India but Oxford would like more of the “best and the brightest”.

Patten, who was in Calcutta in February, would not turn down offers of financial help but stresses Oxford’s efforts are not directed solely towards raising more money — though more money, especially when all British universities are strapped for cash and having to charge their domestic intakes crippling tuition fees of up to £9, 000 a year, would make it possible for more scholarships to be awarded.

“We are acutely conscious that if we want to build the best world-class university, we need to search the world for the best students, best teachers, best researchers — and many of them are in India,” he says.

The “India Day” idea is partly the baby of Frances Cairncross, the rector (head) of Exeter College, who, like Patten, is a frequent visitor to India.

Cairncross, a former distinguished journalist, has several Indians students at her own college.

“I was very aware when I talked to my Indian friends with children (that) they are all going off to the United States,” says Cairncross. “They were not considering coming to Oxford. When they did consider it, they send their daughters to Oxford and their sons to the United States.”

Loren Griffith, acting director of international strategy at Oxford, says the links with India are “right across the humanities, social sciences, study of the economy and political system — all top notch — collaboration in cancer research, natural sciences, (and) physics. We are launching a push to significantly enhance them.”

There are plans to expand research collaboration; attract more donations so that the number of India-focused scholarships can be increased; create “more internships for our students at Infosys and several other Indian companies and use our alumni network of 1,000-1,500”; bring in more mid-career Indian students and officials at the Blavatnik School of Government; and celebrate the 100th anniversary of Oxford University Press in Mumbai next year in a “splashy” way.