Indian students pursuing higher education in Britain now have more than just a British degree to look forward to. A recently passed proposal of the British Government has paved the way for integrating work experience in undergraduate courses to help foreign students gain that extra "exposure".

Describing it as an ambitious attempt to provide foreign students a complete learning experience, the visiting British Minister for Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Lord David Triesman, said the idea was to give students a better education experience.

Noting that the proposal would help students as well as the industry, Lord Triesman added that giving students an early exposure would only increase the number of skilled employees for the industry. "When you get a fresh graduate for work, you have to teach them techniques that are job-specific. Working in a group of people and learning from them can add enormously to their experience."

Speaking on the recently announced UK-India Educational Research Initiative (UKIERI) that will promote scientific research between the two countries, Lord Triesman said he was optimistic about the future of the initiative. He admitted that things were still in the planning stage and described nano-technology and biosciences and product engineering as some of the areas where significant work would be done between the two countries. "These are areas where you can see a lot of dynamic activity. There is significant work being done worldwide and we are going to see a lot of success in the project."

The number of British students coming to India for further studies is yet to see a significant increase, but Lord Triesman is confident of a change in the scenario. Noting that there had been a change in recent times, he said while two-thirds of the students want to go out and discover other places, one-third of the students still pursued their higher studies in their home town.

(The Hindu)