Foreign students step into JNTU

Hyderabad:When JNTU begins its academic year this September , there will be 48 foreignstudents who will join various courses in its twin campuses in the city. Thestudents will form the first full-fledged batch of JNTU foreign students.Though the university had given notification for admission offoreign students last year, there was no response. The students, who have joinedthis academic year, are mainly from Iran, Sundan, China, Nepal and thePalestine. The university is expecting more students to join by the time theacademic year begins as some of the other embassies have also approached it foradmissions . There were a total of 70 applications, and many are still pending."The notification inviting applications was put up on the websiteand we had a good response ," director, academic and planning, E Saibaba Reddytold 'TOI' . The officials said that though there were plans to admit thestudents to all the three JNTU campuses including Kakinada and Anantapur, thishad not materialised. Among the courses offered , the most soughtafter were MBA and B Tech for which around 17 students each have joined. Theothers joined various streams in M Tech courses with computer science being inmuch demand. "In an interaction which was held with the students acouple of days ago they said that they chose JNTU because the course content wasbetter than that in their respective colleges and the cost of education was alsomuch lower. The course is also recognised by various universities abroad,"registrar of the university , K Lal Kishore, told 'TOI' . The fee for thestudents will be five times that of regular students including Rs 50,000 perannum for B Tech, Rs 75,000 for M Tech and around Rs 1 lakh for MBA. However, itis much less when compared to the fee in western countries, including the UK andthe US, where they will have to shell out around Rs 10 lakh per annum.