Rhodes Trust to now offer 6 scholarships to Indian students, entrepreneurs Mukund Rajan and Soumya Rajan to support

Soumya took to LinkedIn and wrote, “The sixth Rhodes assistance for India, endowed successful perpetuity and made imaginable done a concern with a US-based protagonist and the University of Oxford, is successful honour of my maternal great-grandfather, Dr Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, and Mukund’s father, Raghavachari Govindarajan.”

She further said: “Oxford holds a peculiar spot successful our hearts; it is wherever we archetypal met arsenic students and wherever we decided that we would walk the remainder of our lives together. ”

The mates met astatine Oxford University portion pursuing their higher education.

The Rhodes Scholarship is simply a postgraduate grant for planetary students to survey astatine the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. From India, the Rhodes Trust shortlists 5 scholars (six from the adjacent year) and enactment them for up to 4 years.

Indians represent the largest radical of overseas students successful UK universities for the past 2 years. However, the fig of scholarships for years has remained astatine 5. Isn’t this less? “Yes, perfectly and our extremity is to summation it to seven. We are uncovering much donors,” said Kiss who is successful India to denote this assistance and conscionable the Rhodes alumni.

Oxford University remains a fascination for students, particularly Indians who use successful ample numbers. As per Kiss, they person seen astir a 10 per cent summation each twelvemonth successful the fig of applications. “India is successful the apical 5 constituencies successful presumption of fig of applications. We received 700 applications for the 5 spots. We recognize the involvement successful this assistance and we prime based connected merit,” she said.

Apart from India, Rhodes Trust receives astir applications from West Africa, Southern Africa, Pakistan, and the USA. Kiss claims determination is simply a sex equilibrium maintained with astir 50 per cent of Indian scholars being women.

Kiss further elaborates they person been receiving applications from antithetic backgrounds and regions of India. Two years backmost they selected a pupil from Nagaland portion this year, 2 Kashmiri students volition articulation the cohort of 100 planetary scholars. “We support merit arsenic apical criteria and our enactment criteria besides see excellence successful academics, quality and enactment ability,” she said adding India is 1 of the dynamic and emerging economies and they privation much leaders coming from this nation.

Most fashionable courses precocious for Indian Rhodes Scholars person been law, nationalist argumentation and South Asian Studies, Kiss informed. “We besides person Indian scholars studying Neuroscience, Biology, Physics, Theology, Philosophy and different fields,” she said.

Rhodes Trust is besides readying to summation scholarships for African students arsenic well. “That’s besides a high-priority region. The Rhodes Scholarship was established successful 1903 by Cecil John Rhodes. The crushed for the absorption connected Africa is twofold. The archetypal wealthiness oregon backing for the Rhodes Scholarship came from mining activities successful South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. It is our motivation work to enactment the students from these nations. We grant 20 scholarships to African students. Our existent extremity is to get to 32 a year, which would adjacent the fig from the United States,” she informed.

In caller years, the UK authorities has been trying to instrumentality stricter rules for planetary students to discourage immigration.

“Education is 1 of the important sectors of the UK and we worth our planetary students. Their beingness helps lend to prime and diverseness successful the learning environment. We favour much openness to planetary students. I published an sentiment portion a fewer months agone criticising immoderate of the government’s policies similar the postgraduate way which thankfully was not implemented. Currently, if you gain a postgraduate degree, you tin use to enactment successful the UK for 2 years. We person recovered it to beryllium beneficial for our Rhodes scholars from astir the world. The UK provides fantastic enactment acquisition and helps you physique that network,” she said.

Oxford University has a beardown alumni web which besides includes Atishi, Delhi’s caller main minister. “Rhodes Scholars successful antithetic countries collaborated to marque a difference, particularly during the crisis. During the pandemic, we saw the beardown planetary beingness we person wherever alumni were trying to assistance and link each other. We had a Rhodes student who helped make the AstraZeneca vaccine.”