Pune: ICCR To Host ‘Destination India’ Conference Aiming To Make India Desired Education Hub For Global Students

Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) is organising a national conference, ‘Destination India - Making India the Preferred Hub of Education’, on 28th and 29th January at Symbiosis International University, Pune.

The conference will bring together leading educationalists, stakeholders from the industry, and other policy experts to elaborate upon the objective of making India one of the leading hubs of education for foreign students.

The ICCR, the cultural extension of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), has a rich history of more than 60-years of promoting India as a soft power through cultural and educational interactions across the globe.

Under its flagship ‘Scholarship’ programme, ICCR offers scholarship to foreign students who want to study in state and central public universities. ICCR is assisted by the HRD Ministry, Ministry of AYUSH, Ministry of Home Affairs, University Grants Commission, and the Association of Indian Universities in the implementation of this programme.

As of today, there are 47,000 foreign students studying in various state and central universities. The long-term goal of the ICCR is to take this number to at least 2,00,000 students. Also, the HRD Ministry, in 2018, started a ‘Study in India’ programme, enlisting more than 100 leading public and private universities to attract self-finance students to these universities.

As of now, the ICCR offers 4000 scholarships to foreign students while there are 6000 students under the ICCR and MEA scholarships each year.

Given India’s positioning as a global superpower in the coming decade, the conference will aim to drive India’s objective of being a desired hub of education for students around the globe.