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The India government is planning to design a TOEFL-like entrance exam for admission of foreign students in India. The move is a part of the government's plan to attract foreign students to India and increase India's position in the preferred destinations for education in the world.
The Government of India is considering developing a TOEFL-like entrance exam for admission of foreign students in English-medium courses in Indian colleges and universities. This step will be one of the many that the government is considering taking to improve the position of India in the top countries for education in the world.
This information was provided by Dr. Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, the President of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (IICR), in a press conference conducted on Tuesday, 21 January 2020.
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In the same press conference, Dr. Sahasrabuddhe also gave out the information that a number of institutions including ICCR, UGC and Niti Aayog held a number of sessions with the motive of identifying the reasons that hold India back from being one of the top education providers in the world. These sessions have helped the government identify a number of factors contributing to the absence of India from the list of top 15 countries for education in the world. Seeing that currently, India holds the 26th position in that list, the government has set an ambitious target for itself and it is certainly expected to improve the status of foreign education in India.
The idea behind the entrance exam devised on the lines of TOEFL stemmed from one of the reasons identified in these sessions, which was that non-English speaking students found themselves unable to do well in English-medium courses offered by Indian educational institutions.
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In a bid to improve India's reputation as an education provider among foreign students, the government also plans to take several other steps such as building hostels and providing couple accommodation.
One other factor in which India was found lacking was the absence of any mechanism that could provide the exact number of foreign students studying in Indian universities. Depending upon the source, the number of foreign students quoted to be in India can vary largely. While the number is 50,000 as per ICCR's calculations, many other sources claim that over 1 lakh foreigners are studying in India. However, he claimed that the number was likely to go up if Indian classical dance and music, yoga, Ayurveda etc. courses are added under the tourist visa.
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IICR also plans to host a conference & seminar titled 'Destination India - Making India the Preferred Hub of Education' in Pune at the Lavale campus of the Symbiosis International University. Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) is also a part of this collaboration. This national-level conference scheduled to be organized on 28 and 29 January 2020 is the first-of-its-kind to ever be organised in India. In this conference, ICCR aims to develop a roadmap to attract over 2 lakh foreign students to India by the year 2022.
What is ICCR?
ICCR is the cultural arm of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) and the organization is responsible for the promotion of Indian culture and heritage through means such as organization of seminars and cultural exchange and student exchange programmes. The body also provides the ICCR Scholarship to foreign students, which currently has around 4,000 recipients.
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