Indian Student Enrolment in Oz Halves

Melbourne, Sep 2 : Attacks on Indian students in Australia may have hit their enrolment into varsities here, with new figures showing a slump by almost half.

Turmoil in Australia's international education sector, legislative changes and the global financial crisis are also among the factors for the sharp fall in the intake in the foreign student enrolment, according to a media report.

In 2008-09, 65,503 Indian passport holders were granted Australian student visas across all education sectors. But in 2009-10, the number fell to just 29,721. Overall, 50,540 fewer international students were granted visas to study in Australia in 2009-10 compared with 2008-09.

According to 'The Age' today, global student visa numbers dropped over 16 per cent last financial year. It was also said that the new figures were result was also due to student security issues putting pressure on student numbers.

Stephen Connelly, president of International Education Association of Australia, said the drop was not surprising but very worrying.

"There is so much goodwill we generate from having international students in our country, and we are absolutely shooting ourselves in the foot at the moment," he said, adding the government and opposition had sent negative messages to potential students during the federal election campaign and work had to begin on improving Australia's reputation.

If the problems were not tackled quickly, Connelly said, there would be a further significant drop in student numbers. "Applications being received by agents would indicate that the numbers will go down even further. There's a lot more pain in store, I would say," he added.

However, he played down the significance of student security issues, which flared up in Victoria last year following a series of allegedly racist attacks on Indian students. "[Student security] would be lower down on the list of reasons than the difficulties of getting a visa and the lack of differentiation among providers," Connelly said.

National Union of Students president Carla Drakeford said the drop in numbers was very concerning.

"International student decline is dangerous for the university sector - not only because it creates a hole in university funding, but also because of the innate value international students bring to our community and higher education sector," Drakeford said.

Source:Agencies

Reaching-out Therapy

By Anuradha Mascarenhas

A sense of desperation was beginning to grip twenty four-year-old Khlangor Nongkhlaw when, two years after graduating in economics from the North Eastern Hill University in Shillong, he failed to land a job. He was ninth of the ten children his parents had and Khlangor sorely needed a job to support his family.

So when he saw an ad for a six-month course in ayurvedic therapy to be held in Bangalore through the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), he promptly applied. Six months later, on July 29, Khlangor and 22 other youths from the Northeast received their course certificates at the Institute of Ayurvedic and Integrated Medicine (IAIM) in Bangalore. Even before that, Khlangor had landed himself a job at a Bangalore hospital.

To help students from the Northeast with employment opportunities, IGNOU has also set up a new institute of vocational training in Shillong, says Dr Debjani Roy, Director of the Indigenous Knowledge and Technology section of the institute.

“Initially, this job-oriented ayurvedic course was drafted keeping in mind the unemployment problem in those states and was meant for students from the Northeast. But now, we have decided to open it up for everyone. Students weren’t charged anything for the course. The first batch of students from Meghalaya and Assam got their certificates on July 29 and most of them have got jobs in ayurvedic hospitals and wellness centres in Bangalore.” says Roy.

The North Eastern Council has decided to sponsor the next batch of 17 students from the states of Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. Also, the government’s Department of AYUSH has urged that panchkarma therapy should be introduced at all district hospitals in the country.

Twenty two-year-old Palmo Lama, a political science graduate from Shillong, says she took up the course because she wanted to learn something new. “I wish the course was for more than six months,” says Palmo, who wants to work in Bangalore for a while before returning to Shillong.

Renewal Ksoo, a class XII student from Jaintia Hills district of Meghalaya, says she took up the course because she wanted a “job in the city” “They taught us yoga, nursing and panchkarma treatment for people suffering from low back pain or rheumatic complaints,” she says.

Dr Bhushan Patwardhan, director of IAIM who was formerly director of School of Health Science at the University of Pune, says an experienced team of doctors, yoga teachers and therapists trained the students.

Course coordinator Dr Sheetal Arangady says students for the course were selected by a board in Shillong. The minimum qualification needed was class X and students had to be in the age group of 18-25 years.

Bihar’s Famed Coaching Institute Now in Assam

By Syed Zarir Hussain

Guwahati, Jul 11 : The famed Super 30, a coaching institute in Patna which prepares 30 poor students for the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) entrance exam free of cost, opened shop in Assam Sunday.

“We are proud and very happy to announce the formal inauguration of Super 30 chapter in Assam. Super 30 achieved iconic stature because of its success rate,” Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi told IANS after the launch of the Guwahati chapter of the institute.

“We are lucky to have them in our state. It is going to benefit students from the whole of the northeast,” he added.

Like in the past, this year too, all 30 of its students in Super 30 Patna centre cleared the IIT entrance test, the dream of many young Indians.

The 10-month-long fully residential programme is being sponsored by India’s premier exploration firm Oil India Limited (OIL).

“Thirty young IIT aspirants, all from economically backward families in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh, will be part of the first batch and they were selected on the basis of a written test followed by an oral interview and group discussion,” OIL chairman-cum-managing director N.M. Bora said.

Super 30 mentor and former police officer Abhayanand headed the interview panel along with other team members of the institute.

“This will be the first of its kind institute in the northeast and we are confident of achieving the same success rate like our Patna centre,” Abhayanand said.

Super 30 is a highly ambitious and innovative educational programme running under the banner of “Ramanujan School of Mathematics”.

It hunts for 30 meritorious talents from among the economically backward sections of the society and shapes them for India’s most prestigious institution – the IIT. In the last seven years, it has produced hundreds of IIT graduates from extremely poor background.

“We had students from families of brick kiln workers, rickshaw pullers, landless farmers, roadside vendors and the likes. Today, most of them are doing well in life,” Abhayanand said.