What UK varsities see in Indian students

Indian students are considered to be well rounded and the universities also offer intensive orientation programmes

LONDON: Indian students coming to the UK for further education have their basics right, but it is their heavy regional accents that get in the way of English people understanding them correctly.

“Their English grammar and language is absolutely fine, it is in fact their thick Indian accents that needs a little help,” explained Maxine Davis, Head of the International Office at the University of Greenwich. Students come from all over India to the University of Greenwich, but the majority of them are from Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Delhi and Chandigarh. “I’m sorry to say it is accents from regions like Gujarat which are the worst, but students from Mumbai and Delhi are fine,” added Davis, who loves coming to India for recruitment drives.
 
Dr Terry Butland, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Middlesex University agrees with her assessment. “Most of the students who come here from India are so steeped in English that there is absolutely nothing incorrect about their language,” said Butland. Admissions into British universities demand that the student must get at least a 6 in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) to secure a place. “At Greenwich, we have a foundation programme and a 5-week and 10-week English language programme which we urge students who we accept with a 5.5 IELTS score to take,” said Davis.

More and more Indian students are attending British universities in the last decade thanks to India’s foreign exchange liberalisation. This has also coincided with the decrease in government grants to British universities, who are more cash-strapped and have to woo fee-paying students. During the same period all the hundreds of polytechnics in the UK have been allowed to call themselves universities in an effort to make academics more equitable. It is mostly these erstwhile polytechnics which have really benefited from Indians hungry for a British qualification.

Middlesex University (previously Middlesex Polytechnic) in North London has the largest number of Indians in the UK with nearly 800 students this year. A close second is the University of Greenwich (Thames Polytechnic) in East London, which until eight years ago only had 16 Indian students, now it boasts 700.

Both universities offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses but in the case of Greenwich only 15 per cent of the 700 Indian students are undertaking their first degree, while 85 per cent are pursuing a Masters degree. “Postgraduates are always higher from India because a first degree is a minimum of three years which costs a hell of a lot and so students prefer to go for the one year Masters degree at a third of the cost,” explained Davis.

The universities are so keen to encourage students from India to attend their institutions that they don’t have a bad word to say about the calibre of students. “They are diligent, hardworking, respectful and not at all disruptive,” said Butland. “In fact it is this respectfulness that makes them shy about asking questions from those older themselves,” added Butland. “While it is very nice to be treated with so much respect as a teacher, for students who come here they need to learn to be more enquiring as that is the education culture here,” he explained.

Davis agrees with him. Learning by rote and cramming is common to Indian education, but in the UK students are expected to question and learn, think more for themselves to and mould the information they have. “Even if their English is good, they often do not have a lot of confidence to do things like presenting a project,” said Davis. “It is not that their conversational English is poor but it is their confidence which is poor,” she added.

The universities offer intensive orientation programmes to help international students hit the ground running. At Greenwich, they have student centre learning which helps students come to grips with different methodology and grasping study skills. Like all international students, Indians also suffer from homesickness. “But not as much as they used to. The Indian students we get now are very aware of what it is going to be like to live in London, so they are not so overwhelmed,” explains Davis.

Greenwich has been taking Indian students in small numbers from as far back as the 1960s. “Our old boys tell us how they would travel here by ship and once they got to London they didn’t go home until their entire education was finished. The travel then took too long and was very expensive,” said Davis. “Nowadays our students often fly home for each holiday, and so often they are only here for 10 weeks at a time,” she added.
 
Also the fact that there is such a large Indian Diaspora in the UK helps to make students feel at home. Indian students are considered to be well rounded and fine with the practical part of life here. “They are very focussed. They are here to study and ensure that they get their monies worth,” says Davis.

However, the universities did suggest that students should demonstrate more extra-circular activities when applying for admissions. “They are very good at studies, but if they can show activities like sports, being part of a team, voluntary work or even a part-time job it would make them stand out as different from the mass,” suggested Davis.

(This is a two-part series. The second part will appear tomorrow.)