While the new British universities have benefited from the influx of Indian students, older universities like Cambridge, has been losing out to the United States.
LONDON: While the new British universities have benefited from the influx of Indian students, older universities like Cambridge, which has had a long relationship with India, has been losing out to the United States.
“We have fewer Indian students coming to us then in the past because our competitors in the USA offer more scholarships and funding, and with their determined efforts to get students more of them are going there instead of coming to us,” said Dr Kate Pretty, Pro-vice chancellor for International Strategy.
Cambridge has had a long tradition of being the alma mater of Indian prime ministers and offers quite a few scholarships but even then it has not been enough to entice more students. Currently it can boast a total of 170 Indian students. “We don’t see foreign students as money spinners, and for those whom we take we offer full funding, but lately the name Cambridge is no longer enough, because Indians don’t think of Britain as the first place to go,” explained Pretty.
Cambridge obviously doesn’t consider the new universities their direct rivals and expects a completely different academic class of students. It believes Oxford and the Ivy League, Stanford and Berkley are its only real competitors. “At undergraduate level we take very few international students, and at postgraduate level we have very high standards, we are a difficult university to get in,” said Pretty.
In order to bring Cambridge back in to the Indian student radar the Vice-Chancellor Professor Alison Richards has planned her first visit to India in January next year. Timing it so that she can attend the 50th anniversary celebrations of IIT Mumbai, Richards will be in India for almost 2 weeks visiting Delhi, Bangalore, Calcutta and Mumbai. She plans to meet the university alumni as well as hold a series of workshops with them and other industrial partners.
“She wants to get to know India better and remind Indians that Cambridge is the place to go because it can offer a collegiate education like no other university,” added Pretty. Richards, who was formerly a Provost at Yale for 30 years, joined Cambridge in 2003 on a seven-year posting. “Her efforts should work as she knows education on both sides of the Atlantic,” said Pretty.
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