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The finance minister’s budget announcement — of a programme to attract foreign students to study in the higher education establishments here — highlights a problem plaguing India’s most sought-after engineering and management institutes: getting overseas students to sign up for full-time courses.The IITs and IIMs themselves admit that despite fierce competition among India’s best & brightest to get admission at the institutes, foreign students matter. Diversity helps encourage better exchange of ideas, creative problem-solving, innovation and adaptability.It is also linked to the larger government agenda to make India a hub of higher education , by bringing in more foreign students under the Study in India initiative.And then, there’s the international rankings game. If IITs and IIMs want to truly be a player in the global leagues, a good international ranking counts, and there, foreign students have a significant role to play.The recent QS World University Rankings showed that Indian institutes have seen an average decline of 12 ranks. One of the factors responsible was poor international student ratios. Among the IITs, not a single one made it to the top 150.“The major issue is selectivity. Their entry standards are so high that eligible international students are few, and of the calibre that will stand a chance or more to be accepted at MIT, Stanford, Caltech, etc.,” says Ben Sowter, the research director at Quacquarelli Symonds.Ellie Bothwell, the global rankings editor at Times Higher Education, says it’s the perceived quality of the Indian higher education sector, including the quality of infrastructure, that is a major barrier.Doing two things could significantly improve the chances of attracting foreign students: big scholarships and a willingness to compromise on the GMAT cut-off, in case of the IIMs. But both those areas remain challenges.The Graduate Management Admission Council, which owns the GMAT test, had launched its own Study in India initiative in 2017 to rebuild the country’s attractiveness as a study destination for higher education. In the first year, it got 2,715 leads from 60-odd countries; in the second year, it was 4,429.But barring Indian School of Business (ISB) and a few other private business schools that were aggressive in offering financial aid, there were hardly any applications that got converted.India is looked upon as a cost-effective destination and not being too willing to give scholarships becomes an issue.“A number of institutes hesitate to offer financial aid,” says Gaurav Srivastava, the regional director for South Asia at GMAC.Also, says Srivastava, for some of the top schools, the GMAT cut-off is sacrosanct: with expected scores of around 710. That would get them to top-ranked schools globally. “If a female student from Kenya gets 710, at least 6-7 leading US institutes will give her full waiver of tuition fees because you don’t get too many candidates from the African subcontinent with that kind of GMAT cutoff. So why would she want to come to India then,” he asks.“Many foreign students are looking at migration post completion of a programme. They want examples of former students for guidance. Their admission decision is stalled because others have not chosen to apply and those others have not applied because there are no prior examples either,” says Sanket Mohapatra, the faculty coordinate for student exchange programme at IIM-Ahmedabad.Among Indian B-schools, ISB has arguably the highest success rate, having admitted 14 international students for its post graduate programme class of 2020. However, “India is still not seen by international applicants as a destination for management education,” says dean Rajendra Srivastava.IITs on their part are pushing to admit more international students and faculty. But the majority of foreign students coming in are for short stint via-exchange programmes.In June, several IITs came together for the first PAN IIT Dean International Relations Conclave at IIT-Kharagpur to brainstorm on attracting and admitting more international students.“We are visiting top universities of neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, creating awareness and offering higher fellowship,” says Bhim Singh, the deanacademics at IIT-Delhi.IIT-Kharagpur is promoting funded programmes targeted at students in Saarc, African, Asean, East European and Latin American countries. “Students from first world countries have a preference for countries of similar socio-economic status,” says Baidurya Bhattacharya, its dean of international relations.“Another challenge is the availability of work permit in India for international students.”IIT-Bombay works with funding agencies such as ICCR, DAAD and Ethopian Embassy. “If we improve our academic reputations, do more high-quality research, have job placements of top quality in India and abroad, improve infrastructure, then international students will find our institutions attractive,” says dean of international relations Swati Patankar.This summer, IIT-Madras introduced a programme, Global Research Internships in Engineering, Sciences, Humanities and Management. “We have reached out to universities in South East Asia and other neighbouring countries to attract UG students to give them an experience of research here so they could be potential students in our PhD programme later,” says dean of international and alumni relations Mahesh Panchagnula.It’ll take time, say stakeholders. Leading US institutes took decades to reach the levels of diversity they are at today, driven by sustained marketing efforts, generous scholarships, top quality infrastructure, professors and research facilities. While leading IITs and IIMs are also working with Study in India, the government initiative to go for student recruitment fairs in neighbouring countries and sending faculty to key countries for student recruitment, they are far lagging their international counterparts.GMAC gives B-schools a tool to evaluate countrywide percentiles. A GMAT score of 700, in India, could be at 85-90 percentile; in France it could be 80 percentile and in Bangladesh, 98. “Candidates need to be evaluated accordingly,” says Srivastava.There is some debate on this issue, says G Sabarinathan, the admissions chair at IIM-Bangalore.While some feel that the GMAT cut-off can be reduced to get in foreign students, others say then the quality would suffer, he says More international faculty and more immersion programmes are required, says IIM-Kozhikode director Debashis Chatterjee. “Institutes need to start talking to corporates about taking up foreigners as interns,” he says.The government needs to step up financial support to foreign students and give scholarships to targeted countries, like in the US, says IIT-Delhi alumnus Arun Duggal, the chairman of ratings firm Icra.