One of the premier institutions of the country, Indian Institue of Technology, Madras has seen a upsurge of 61% in the number of foreign students exchanged since 2011 till 2016.
According to a report by The Times of India, the number of foreign students has risen from 90 in 2011 to 145 in 2016.
Currently, it has visiting faculty and exchange students that account for the international crowd on the campus. The institue is also climbing on the QS Rankings and the Times Rankings or the ministry of human resource development (MHRD) ranking.
Speaking to the newspaper, R Nagarajan, dean of international and alumni affairs, said, "The exchange student programme works in two ways. One, where the student visits a foreign university to pursue one semester (four months), and in exchange a student from that foreign university visits IIT-M."
"The second possibility is for a student to visit IIT-M for research collaboration," he added.
A majority of the international students come from Europe (Germany , France, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy and Denmark).
Nagrajan also informed that under the full time programmes, two students (both Korean) are doing their B Tech. From 2011 to 2016, students from Ethiopia, Romania and Mauritius have taken up M Tech, MS and PhD at IITM.
The number of international faculty has also significantly increased in the campus.
A few days back, IIT, Kharagpur announced that it will provide opportunity to its students to study in some of the top universities of the world for one semester even before they complete their degrees.
The senate of the IIT-KGP has given its nod to the Semester Away Programme (SAP), allowing students to avail of the facility from the middle of this year,
