Foreign students prefer Karnataka most, says report

New Delhi, Dec 26: Karnataka is the most favourite destination for foreign students to undertake higher education with the universities and colleges in the state enrolling the highest number of those coming to India from more than 150 countries across the world.

While India recorded enrolment of a total of 39, 517 foreign students in 2013-14, about 16 per cent higher than what recorded in 2011-12, Karnataka had the largest share of them as over 35 per cent of these students preferred to study in the state, according to final report on survey of higher education in India for these years.

A total of 13,075 foreign students took admissions to various degree programmes offered by the higher education institutions operating in the state, which has third highest number of universities (51) and second largest number of colleges (3,075) operating within its jurisdiction.

A final report of the All India Survey of Higher Education for the year 2013-14 along with a provisional report of the nationwide survey for 2014-15 was recently released by the Human Resource Development Minister.

A comparison of the enrolment figures collected till the last academic years clearly indicates that higher educational institutions in Karnataka have remained the most preferred choice for the foreign students so far. Out of 34,774 foreign students enrolled in India in 2012-13, altogether 13,241 students took admissions to higher educational institutions in Karnataka. The universities and colleges in the state enrolled 12,058 foreign students of the total 33,151 students enrolled in the country in 2011.

According to the reports, universities and colleges in Tamil Nadu had the second largest number of foreign students enrolled to various degree programmes. The neighbouring state, however, remained far behind Karnataka as it recorded enrolment of just 5,460 foreign students, followed by Maharashtra (5006), Uttar Pradesh (2816)¸ Punjab (2,157), Telangana (2,103) and Delhi (1,546) in 2013-14.

Wile foreign students come to India to pursue higher education from 158 different countries, students from neighbouring forms the biggest chunk. The highest number of foreign students, enrolled at higher educational institutions in India, came from Nepal (21 pc) followed by Afghanistan (8 pc), Bhutan (7 pc) and Malaysia (6 pc) in 2013-14.

“These are among the top 10 countries which constitute 65 per cent of the total foreign students enrolled, besides Sudan and Iraq which constitutes 5 per cent each,” the report said.

While 63.7 per cent Malaysian students enrolled here are women, over 92.4 students from Afghanistan are men. Percentage of men among the students from Sudan and Iraq are also “considerably” higher–92.4 and 86.7 respectively. Of the total 39, 517 foreign students, 76.85 per cent students are enrolled to UG programmes followed by PG at 16.29 per cent.