Osmania University stands at the 4th place among all universities in the country in attracting international students coming to India while among the Central varsities Hyderabad Central University stands in the third place.
A recent report, “Internationalisation of Higher Education in India”, published by the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) revealed that OU stands at the fourth place with 1787 international students. Though the report was published recently the figures pertain to the year 2014-15.
The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), New Delhi with 3022 students is in the first place followed by University of Pune (1896) and Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, Bangalore (1842). IGNOU is an open university while the rest are conventional universities.
Among the Central Universities also IGNOU occupies the first place followed by University of Delhi (1180) and University of Hyderabad (218).
The report found that 30,423 foreign students were now pursuing various courses in India with the maximum of (21,668) in the under graduate courses followed by post graduate (6,478), doctoral (1284) and other courses (993).
Mostly UG courses
In Telangana maximum students come for undergraduate courses like any other State.
Karnataka with 7,867 international students in 24 universities attracts the highest numbers with private universities taking the major share. In fact, four universities in Karnataka have international students in excess of 1000 marks. Maharashtra with 4618 international students across 23 universities is the second most popular destination. Telangana has been host to 2,169 international students spread over 6 of its universities.
UFRO
The University Foreign Relation Office (UFRO) of the Osmania University, that functions as the single window for admission of foreign students in OU area, says the numbers have increased since then. As per 2016-17 academic year statistics, 3,897 students are enrolled from 87 countries. “The enrolments are likely to increase this year too when the admission season ends in August,” said UFRO Director G.B. Reddy.
Prof. Reddy said that the Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA) is the most popular among foreign students in OU colleges followed by B.Com and B.Sc. Some affiliated colleges are popular for these courses but university college is the most popular for B.Tech and BE courses and admissions are directly handled by the UFRO. Prof. Reddy said 15% supernumerary seats are created for foreign students with 5% each earmarked for foreign nationals, Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) and children of Indians working in the Gulf.
Barriers
The AIU report revealed that difficulties in recognition of international qualifications was reported to be a major barrier in admitting international students by the universities, even though the AIU facilitates the process by determining equivalence of international qualification.
