The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Gulf Indians seek Anna Varsity campus in Dubai

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 22, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Gulf Indians seek Anna Varsity campus in Dubai

Special Correspondent

Students keen on biotech, aeronautics and architecture

LOOKING TO GO GLOBAL: Anna University's academic team with visitors at a recent educational expo in Abu Dhabi.

CHENNAI: Indians in the Gulf want Anna University to open a campus in Dubai, so that they can enrol their wards in the premier technical education institution.

"This demand was quite apparent when the University participated in GETEX 2005, an international education exhibition held at Dubai earlier this month," says the Dean of the College of Engineering, Guindy, R. Ramprabhu.

The CEG is one of the constituent colleges of Anna University, India's largest technical university.

Clearance awaited

Anna University's Syndicate has ratified a proposal that would enable the university to operate outside Tamil Nadu and abroad.

"The University is awaiting clearance from the State Government for the proposal. We need to pass an amendment to the Anna University Act so that it can operate outside the State," adds the Vice-Chancellor, E. Balagurusamy.

Dr. Ramprabhu, who along with the Director of Admissions, A. Ramalingam, and Deputy Director of Student Affairs, P. Mallika, visited the Dubai exhibition, said the University had a provision to increase the seats by 5 per cent over and above the sanctioned intake and allot these seats specifically to NRIs from the Gulf, where Indian students studied mostly in the CBSE pattern.

Anna University's team took part in exhibitions in Abu Dhabi in March and Dubai this month.

"We had at least 400 enquiries, which is every encouraging and we have already got 25 admission applications for further processing... " Dr. Ramprabhu adds. The largest number of enquiries from among Indian parents and youngsters were for courses in Architecture, Aeronautical Engineering, Biotechnology and Electronics and Communications Engineering. "We had an overwhelming number of enquiries on these subjects."

Working engineers in the Middle East were also keen on taking up specialised in-service training to add value to their own skills.

Satellite campus

University officials say there are two ways they could approach the issue of opening a satellite campus: one is by the university itself raising funds, hiring a site and setting up a full-fledged centre and infrastructure for offering its programmes; the second option is to affiliate a college (as they do now for any other college in the State) opened in the Gulf.

The University authorities feel that the first option would involve huge expenditure that too in foreign currency, which would be too complicated for a government type of organisation. BITS-Pilani or the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) could do so because they had the advantage of being private.

Academic content

However, if a college in the Gulf, preferably with Indian stakeholders is found, the university could offer its academic content, course and complete support for such a venture.

With a liberalised trade regime, Indian brand of technical educational services can certainly make a mark.

"But we need to do it early so that we can be competitive," says the Vice-Chancellor.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu

News Update

Stories in this Section