Indira Gandhi National Open University draws most foreign students to India: study

The latest study on the profile of international students in India shows that it is the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU), a distance education institute, which draws the maximum number of foreigners. With 3,000 foreign students in 2005-06, it leaves the other varsities in the country far behind.

Pune University comes second, having attracted over 2,400 foreign students in the same academic year with Manipal University next at 1,400-plus students from abroad. Delhi University finishes fourth with 1,055 students, followed by Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) Pilani with 912 foreign students admitted in 2005-06.

The study, conducted by Prof Dayanand Dongaonkar and senior research assistant Dr Usha Rai Negi for the Association of Indian Universities (AIU), has also categorised those coming to study in India by country of origin.

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Two Bengal bandh stories: students fight back, German Nano engineer grounded

What do a bunch of students of the Indira Gandhi Open University have in common with Ritter Wolfgang Schulder, a german engineer, working on Tata’s Nano Car.?

They were both caught in 12 hours bandh called by the Left Front government in West Bengal today against fuel price hike. But while the students, through sheer grit, got around the strike. Schuler and another Austrian engineer were stranded in the city trying to figure out why state that says it will roll out the world’s cheapest car shutsdown protesting the “global oil shock”.

A batch of over 100 IGNOU students defined the bandh and appeared for their examination today by arriving at their centres in the early hours of dawn, well before the bandh began at 6 a.m. Mithu Chattapdhyay from Hooghly, who had to take her Master’s in Library and Information Science, did not want the effort she had put in for months to go in Vain. So she boarded a train at 3:40 a.m. along with her husband. Tumpa Chowdhury, a teacher of English at a school in Burdwan, three hours away, set off from home late last night itself.

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