King’s College London invites Indian post-graduate students to apply for special awards

London: King’s College London has issued a callout to Indian students to apply in time to be eligible for the Vice-Chancellor’s Awards, which comes with a 10,000-pound (about Rs 11,26,000) fee waiver to pursue a post-graduate degree geared towards making a wider societal impact.

The leading London-based university’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Shitij Kapur, told PTI this week that he is particularly proud of these awards for Indian students, having himself left Delhi to pursue post-graduate studies abroad.

Kapur also highlighted the university’s historic Indian connection, going back to when freedom fighter Sarojini Naidu was among its first female alumni in the nineteenth century.

“We were one of the earliest universities in the UK to teach Sanskrit and Bengali and Sarojini Naidu was one of our remarkable students in the very early days when King’s started admitting female students,” said Kapur.

“In more recent times, we have seen a surge of applicants from India and one of the things we realised is that for many of them, the fees of a UK university is a barrier. So, to encourage more students, we came up with the Vice-Chancellor’s Awards,” he said.

The awards, now in their second year, are open for 30 Indian students starting full-time, on-campus post-graduate study in London starting in September and should have applied for their course by the end of April.  “We are particularly interested in how they will use the learnings from what they have decided to study at King’s to make a difference to the communities to which they belong," said Kapur, who is also president of the multi-faculty university.

"It involves them writing about their academic qualifications, but it also requires them to highlight how the journey at King’s fits into their longer-term journey of making the world a better place,” he added.

Having graduated from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Kapur went on to study and then teach in the US, Canada and Australia before taking up his current role at King’s College London a few years ago.

“I'm very much a part of that diaspora, which is only going to grow. The number of Indian students seeking world-level university education will continue to boom over the next 10-15 years,” he reflected.

The senior academic welcomed the opening of new international university campuses in India, with the universities of Southampton and Surrey among some of the early UK institutions to have confirmed expansion plans to India.

“I think it's an absolutely wonderful opportunity. The scale at which India's need for high-end university education is growing is just enormous. What I hope it leads to is a differentiated set of offerings so that for students in India, there is a diversity of offers, both in terms of quality and in terms of price point,” said Kapur.

“King's already has some joint programmes with chosen Indian universities. It's too early to say whether those might evolve into other sorts of partnerships or campuses, but India as a source of students is absolutely right at the center of our thinking,” he said.

Asked about the two-year Graduate Route visa which offers international students the chance to gain work experience at the end of their degrees, Kapur expressed optimism at that offer continuing to be a pull factor for Indian students.

“From the best we know, this government has not given any signals that threaten the core Graduate visa with the right to work and look for work over two years after graduation. If there is some talk, it's about setting the (salary) threshold for the skilled worker visa,” he said.

On the wider immigration debate around international students being considered in a temporary category, he added: “The question here is not necessarily about public perception, because the British public is positively inclined and sees the win-win possibilities of international students.

“The challenge is distinguishing this debate from the much larger social debate about the total immigrant numbers… the point isn't to monitor it. By all means, monitor it, but monitor it separately, so it's completely transparent. But don't put it in the same pool as everything else.”