Telangana retains 5th rank for foreign students as educational hub

Hyderabad: Telangana continues to be a hot favourite for foreign students to pursue higher education in India, and has retained the fifth position this year as well.

With more than 3,460 international students being admitted in the State and Central universities here, Telangana has only Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh ahead of it.

This was revealed in the report, All India Survey on Higher Education 2017, of the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Besides retaining its 5th position, the State has also attracted 420 more foreign students during the academic year 2016-17.

State-wise, Karnataka has highest number of international student enrolment i.e., 13,050 followed by Tamil Nadu with 4,889, Maharashtra with 4,619, Uttar Pradesh with 3,602, Telangana with 3,461, Punjab with 3,246, Delhi with 2,632 and Andhra Pradesh with 2,341.

High number of foreign students was for undergraduate courses, accounting to 76.9 per cent, whereas post-graduate courses had 14.5 per cent foreign admissions.

According to the survey, foreign male students were higher in almost all levels except in certificate courses where female students were more.

The highest number of students were from Nepal (23.6 per cent) followed by Afghanistan (9.3 per cent), Bhutan (4.8 per cent), Nigeria (4.4 per cent), Sudan (4.4 per cent) and Malaysia (3.5 per cent) among others.

Of the total admissions in Telangana, Osmania University has more than half of the foreign students. Over 1,700 international students took admissions into various courses during 2016-17.

“There are lot of similarities between Kabul and Hyderabad. A Master degree from India is most accepted and credited in Afghanistan and Europe. This apart, cultural diversity is another reason besides an affordable cost of living,” said Sharifullah Ayubi, an Afghan pursuing Journalism at Department of Communication and Journalism, OU.

The BCA and B.Com courses of OU are favourites among foreign students whereas it is MBA and MA courses at the PG level.

“Quality and affordable education besides security in the university make foreign students choose OU for higher studies,” said Prof GB Reddy, Director, University Foreign Relations Office, OU.