Hyderabad: Telangana continues to attract foreign students for their higher education. This was revealed in the All India Survey on the Higher Education (AISHE) report 2019-20 released by the Ministry of Education, Government of India on Thursday.
Foreign students enrolling in various courses in the State has registered a growth. A total of 2,261 including 1,784 men and 477 women have enrolled in 2019-20 as against 2020 in the academic year 2018-19. These students are mainly from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and African countries.
Across the country, a total of 49,348 foreign students enrolled in 2019-20 and Telangana is among 10 states with more than 2,000 foreign students enrolled.
The survey report was based on the responses given by the higher education institutions. A total of 2,609 institutions in the State registered for the survey of which 96 per cent have responded.
As per the report, there is an increase in the number of foreign students taking up PhD in various streams in the State. While 15 international students including eight men and seven women had enrolled in PhDs in 2018-19, this went up to 32, with 21 men and 11 women, in 2019-20.
Most international students preferred to join various undergraduate courses in the State. In fact, such number of enrollments have gone up from 1,595 in 2018-19 to 1,908 with 1,569 men and 339 women in 2019-20. They have also joined postgraduate, PG diploma, diploma, and integrated courses offered by the Central and State Universities in the State.
Given the cosmopolitan culture in Hyderabad, most foreign students join colleges in the city particularly in the ones of the Osmania University. Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University-Hyderabad too has a good number of foreign national students in its engineering, technology, and pharmacy courses. Other universities – University of Hyderabad, English and Foreign Languages University, and Maulana Azad National Urdu University, enrol foreign students as well.