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With not even one foreign students in 9 of the IIT’s, the attempts of the government to make IIT more diverse went all in vain.
In the remaining 9 institutes, foreigners are less than one percent of the total number of students. This data has been recorded despite setting aside of 25% of the total seats for foreign students.
The government is making efforts to attract more foreign students in the IIT’s not only to make the population of IIT’s more diverse but also to increase the global ranking of IIT as one of the parameters for the same is the number of foreign students.
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Despite it being among one of the top institutes in India, IIT’s have not been able to make the list of top 200 global schools.
According to research, there are a total of 230 foreign students across 18 IIT’s with 130 of them pursuing post-graduate courses and 100 in PhD. On the contrary, 25,000 Indian students are enrolled in these programmes.
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Keeping in mind these stats, the IIT council will be taking action to attract more students from the neighbouring countries. From next year, IIT’s are planning to conduct admission tests for its UG and PG courses in South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) countries -- but not Pakistan -- and Singapore, Dubai and Ethiopia.
The outreach programme for the test will begin from August in eight countries including Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
Currently, the ministry is aiming at increasing the number of foreign students in IIT’s by up to 10%. In order to get admission in IIT’s, the students will have to appear for GATE or GRE.
