• February 16, 2022

UK wants noted Indian universities to open branches in Britain: Refers to graduates like Sundar Pichai

LONDON Feb 15: UK’s University of Birmingham has said it wants “physical presence” of India’s fabled tech universities as part of a “real partnership”.

UK’s former universities minister Lord Johnson said the graduates from IITs run many tech companies including Google head Sundar Pichai with many UK universities ready to “roll out the red carpet” as the UK looks to invite foreign universities of repute to establish their branches in the country.

According to reports, the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are set to open its branches in the UK. Last year, IIT-Kharagpur and the University of Manchester had launched India-UK doctoral programme.

Reports in Times of India said that leading Indian universities and IITs are in talks to open branches in Britain to cater to British students.

This comes as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to internationalise Indian higher education — one of the recommendations of the New Education Policy of India.

Michelle Donelan, UK higher education minister, tweeted on Monday: “Our door is always open to the IITs, which could be a tremendous asset to this country. Mutual cooperation in higher education is a great source of strength and friendship between the UK and India.”

Gaitri Kumar, high commissioner of India to the UK, confirmed at an Observer Research Foundation webinar: “Foreign institutes of repute are invited to establish branches of their institutions in India. We have only last week shared the desire of our IITs to open campuses in the UK and I must say that this has been well received. This is another thing I’ll be working on immediately to get the IITs and interested universities here together. India would like her partners to consider India as more than just a market for education because we seek to forge international knowledge relationships, as we believe in an ancient proverb that knowledge is the only wealth that when shared enriches the giver and receiver.”