By Mehboob Inamdar
Aurangabad, Oct 11:
Nearly 25 per cent of international students turned their back towards admissions in Dr Bababsaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University (Bamu) departments and affiliated colleges this year compared to the last academic year.
Director of Foreign Students Cell (FSC) Dr Vikas Kumar claimed that this is because of inflation while some foreign students cited the reason for the rise in fees and unavailability of facilities.
It may be noted that last year over 204 students from different countries had taken admissions within Bamu’s jurisdiction, out of 300 registered aspirants.
Significantly, around 400 foreign students from 42 countries including Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Nepal, Syria, Nigeria and Iraq, registered for admissions to various courses including undergraduate, postgraduate and Ph D research, in university departments and affiliated colleges for the academic year 2022-23 while only 155 candidates confirmed their admissions.
This shows a 25 per cent decline in the admission ratio of international students. Some of the foreign students told this newspaper that their fellow countrymen migrated to other universities in the country due to some reasons.
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The students said that there is an annual tuition fee hike of 10 per cent. “We have to wait long for trivial things if money under the table is not paid. Some department directors have discrimination and negative perception about us,” they said. They said that there is a lack of practical materials in the science laboratories and researchers have to pay for the materials from their own pockets even though Bamu collects three to five times more fees from them than local students.
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Kumar said that various initiatives like a separate hostel were taken to attract more students. He said that the FSC had confirmed the application forms of 175 students sent by the Indian Council of Culture Relations (ICCR) while 89 application forms of students who directly approached the university were confirmed.
He said the Indian Government ICCR grants scholarships to foreign students to study here and make the country ‘Vishwaguru.’
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“This year also, the highest number of students are mostly from Yemen,” he said. Some of the aspirants who are from war-torn countries informed this newspaper that they applied for admission to Bamu because of finding similar culture and cheaper education on the local level.
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400 international students registered while 155 confirmed the admissions
Year-wise students admitted candidates ratio is as follows;
2018-19---52
2019-20--107
2020-21--113
2021-22--200
2022-23--155