No additional financial support to institutions for ‘fee waiver’ under Study In India

NEW DELHI, APRIL 23: While MHRD backed ‘Study in India’ initiative aims to facilitate the foreign students interested in pursing studies in the country, the Ministry has said that there will not be any financial assistance to the institution towards offsetting any fee waiver that they offer to the inbound students.

The Government of India has recently launched the ‘Study in India’ initiative under which as many as 160 higher education institutions will offer around 15 thousand seats altogether to foreign students. To attract foreign students, these institutions will also offer fee waiver in the range of 25 per cent to 100 percent to students. However, the central government has clarified that there will be no additional cash flow from the government to institutions for this initiative.

The Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development, Dr. Satya Pal Singh, while replying to a question in Rajya Sabha on ‘Study In India’ policy said that the expenditure on the fee waiver will have to be borne by the Institute concerned, based on cross-subsidisation or through its existing funding. “No additional cash flow from Government is proposed for the same,” he said.

The ‘Study in India’ programme launched last week has the objective to target foreign students by branding India as an attractive education destination. It proposes fee waivers to meritorious foreign students which will be decided by the Institute concerned in different slabs - 100% waiver of tuition fees for the top 25% students; 50% waiver of tuition fees only for the next 25% students; and 25% waiver of tuition fees only for the next 25% students. There will not be any waiver of tuition fee for remaining 25% of students, as per the proposal.

No adverse impact on seats for Indian students

The Minister further added that as per the existing Government framework, the admission to foreign students will be granted in 10-15 percent supernumerary seats available with institutions. “Study in India programme would target the foreign students to be admitted as per this provision, which would not have any adverse impact on the number of seats earmarked for Indian students in Indian higher education institutions,” he replied in the Upper House.

The 'Study in India' programme has been launched to improve the soft power of India with focus on the neighboring countries and use it as a tool in diplomacy and to boost the number of inbound International students in India. The Minister said that the initiative also aims “To double India’s market share of global education exports from less than 1 percent to 2 percent”.

It is also expected that with the initiative, institutions in India will have edge in terms of recruiting mix of foreign students and improve global ranking of Indian institutions.