Study Abroad: ‘Big increase’ in Indians in undergraduate courses, says University of Lincoln VC

NEW DELHI: The United Kingdom attracts a large number of Indian students to postgraduate programmes but a new visa rule has restricted students from switching to the work route before completing their studies. In a conversation with Careers360, Neal Juster, vice-chancellor, University of Lincoln, spoke about programmes Indians opt for, employability skills and more. Edited excerpts below.

Q. The United Kingdom is one of the top destinations for Indians looking to study abroad. With the change in visa regulations, do you think interest is still high?

A. Due to the recent policies there might be a slight decrease in the market but otherwise, the UK would remain a favourite destination for the students because of the quality of education. The UK universities also have the most diverse courses and are more affordable compared to other destinations therefore it remains a top choice for international students.

Q. The event you recently attended in India was on employability skills for graduates. How are you looking at addressing this specifically for Indian students?

A. What we are trying to put in our courses at the University of Lincoln in either the one-year masters programme or three-year undergraduate programme is to build up communication skills making them confident, making sure they do team work, making sure you have deep creative skills and analytical skills. But more importantly, how the skills are to be applied in a real-world context. Each of our undergraduate programmes allows a year’s placement opportunity. All of our master's in management programmes have an academic consultancy module where students work on real-life problems. We try to give placements. We give all sorts of international opportunities to students who come from India.

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Q. Most students previously went for postgraduate courses. Do you have many Indian students in undergraduate programmes now?

A. Yes there are 1,200 Indian students in the university, 1,100 of them are postgraduate students and 100 are undergraduates. Last year, there were only 10 or 15 Indian students in the undergraduate programme, so there is a big increase in students from India who want to join the undergraduate courses.

Q. Do the Indians or the Chinese students form the largest contingent?

A. The Chinese students across the United Kingdom are dominant, but if we are talking about Lincoln University, the Chinese are fourth on our list. Last year we had more Nigerians and Indians. This year we will have more Indians because of the crash in the Nigerian currency. But across the UK, the Chinese are still the most frequent students, particularly in the Russell Group of Universities.

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Q. What are the programmes which draw the maximum number of Indian students?

A. Well, there are many universities where the students are interested in business graduate subjects like business and management, accounting and finance subjects but where we see big crowds is actually in subjects like agri-food tech, AI and robotics, data science plus computing – that's where we see some really big growth in the last 12 months. Indian students in MSc are agri-food technology and agri-tech students.

Q. What are you doing to attract Indian students?

A. We are running courses which we think are attractive to the Indian market. We are giving scholarships to Indian students if they gain certain marks. Most students get 4,000 GBP. We also have a global scholarship which we give 50 students across all of our international cohorts – for very, very high-quality students – a third of that went to Indian students last year. We are adapting our curriculum to ensure that our learning assessments lie within the expectations of the Indian students. We cannot guarantee placements but we put in a lot of effort into ensuring the career and employability skills required for a job.