Having got the tag of institution of eminence from the Centre, the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, has decided to double its intake of foreign students in the coming year. It is also looking at increasing the number of foreign students to 10% of its strength in five years.
“For international students, we are creating some fellowships now. We hope to have at least double our international student intake in one year. We now have about 100 foreign students, but we want to increase this to 200 students. And we want to reach a target of at least 1,000 students in five years. That will be 10% of our total student strength. That is our target,” said a highly placed source at the IIT-Delhi.
The induction of foreign students is being seen as necessary to enhance the global ranking of institutions, as the institute of eminence status is aimed at helping Indian institutions break into the global league.
The QS ranking of higher educational institutions across the world ranks them on five parameters — foreign faculty, foreign students, student-faculty ratio, research and perception. The IIT-Delhi gets zero ranking with regard to foreign students as of now.
As institutions of eminence, IIT-Delhi, IIT-Bombay and IISc are eligible for an additional grant of ₹1,000 crore from the Centre.