January 18, 2008

Passage to India: Davis campus in global spotlight

By Haley Davis

UC Davis and a few of its students are the subject of broadcasts currently being aired in India aimed at showcasing American higher education and recruiting more students from that country.

It is all because UC Davis was chosen as one of several schools nationwide to take part in the U.S. Electronic Education Fair for India, a program aimed at opening the doors to American higher education for students around the world.

Nicole Ranganath, director of International Activities for UC Davis, leads UC Davis' participation in the program. She hopes it will help attract international students to UC Davis.

"India is the number-one leading country of origin for international students in the U.S., but Indian students are only ranked 5th for international students on our campus," she said.

Untapped potential

Ranganath's motivation is fueled by her belief that Indian students are an untapped resource for UC Davis — about 100 Indian students now attend the university, and she thinks more would like to come.

The challenge is getting the word out to that part of the world.

This is where the U.S. Electronic Education Fair for India comes into play. The program was initiated by the 2006 University Presidents' Summit on International Education, an event involving such luminaries as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings. The idea was to promote institutions of higher education like UC Davis in India.

The result has been an extensive multimedia campaign across the airwaves and online, showcasing UC Davis and other universities in countries like China and now India.

Filming on the UC Davis campus is aimed at spurring interest back in India. Maggie Choy, a producer for the film crew that visited UC Davis on Oct. 30, said the Chinese effort bodes well for a successful UC Davis venture into India.

"The number of Chinese students enrolling abroad increased after the broadcast," she said.

'It's a good change'

During the film shoot, three UC Davis students who moved to the United States from India were interviewed about their reasons for choosing UC Davis. They were Anandkumar Surendrarao, a second-year graduate student studying plant pathology; Anjolie Daryani, second-year undergraduate with a double major in psychology and animal science with an emphasis in equine studies; and Nikita Kapur, a third-year undergraduate studying nutrition science.

Kapur was included in the first of two shows being broadcast on national TV in India. The shows began airing Dec. 8 and will continue Dec. 15, 22 and 29. Both are posted to a Web site for viewing at www.namastestudyusa.com.

In those broadcasts, UC Davis is one of only two campuses that is featured in both episodes. Doug Cook, a plant pathologist at UC Davis, is the first interview of the second episode.

Kapur related her experience as a foreign-born student as a struggle well worth the effort. Arriving at UC Davis as a freshman "was very hard," she said, "but quite honestly, it was worth it. I have become very open-minded and coming here has made me stronger, more independent, and more mature. My family and friends can see the change in me. It's a good change."

Kapur said she chose to attend UC Davis because of its highly recognized nutrition program and the many career opportunities available in the field.

"I also came because there's an emphasis on liberal education, which I was never exposed to in India. It's very important for a student to expand beyond their major," she said.

Surendrarao's decision to attend school here was based not only on his desire to live in the U.S., where we are at "the cutting edge of everything in science," but also on his wish to see "science progress in a more global way."

He said, "I see science being a really major part of globalization. Knowledge should not be constrained by geopolitical economic barriers."

Daryani also wanted her schooling at UC Davis to lead to more than just her education. She participated in the international education fair because "we basically wanted to portray how coming to the U.S. can open doors for women in Asia."

A second-year fund-raising officer on the UC Davis equestrian team, Daryani also wants to use her education to influence medicine back in India. "I hope to introduce into India the idea of healing people with mental and physical disorders using animals, like service dogs and therapeutic riding," she said.

'Intellectual capital'

Ranganath believes it is critical to import the intellectual capital that Kapur, Surendrarao, Daryani and others like them offer to the U.S. Innovation on campus, she says, is driven by the best minds, many of which can be found in India.

In 2005-06, an estimated 564,766 international students were enrolled in U.S. higher education institutions — 76,503 of them came from India. But with only 7 percent of its 18-to-24-year-old population attending higher education institutions, vast numbers of intellectual capital in India remains unrealized.

Despite this surplus of viable students, Ranganath said that in recent years the U.S. has become "complacent" about attracting them to our universities.

"The best and the brightest have always come to us," Ranganath said.

But she added that with the emergence of rival higher education institutions in places like the United Kingdom and Australia, and the difficulty of entry into the U.S. in the post-9/11 world, international students have sometimes found America "inhospitable" for college studies.

"The United States is seen as very unwelcoming to foreigners," said Ranganath. And so, federal programs like the EEFI intend to change this perception among college age students in other countries.

In the years ahead, competition for students is expected to increase, especially in India. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh recently announced that $13 billion would be devoted to building 1,150 new Indian universities by 2015, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Singh wants to raise the number of Indians attending universities to at least the average of all Asian countries, which is about 15 percent.

Part of that plan is to convince Indian students, through various methods, to choose the United States for higher education. Besides advertising specific schools, Ranganath hopes EEFI will debunk myths about the U.S.'s receptiveness to international students and about the visa system being more complicated than it truly is.

Ranganath expects that most of the Indian students interested in UC Davis will be attracted to its graduate programs in science, engineering and management. In 2005-06, 74 percent of the total Indian students studying in the United States were working toward graduate degrees.

"In the developing world, this education will be a huge expense," Ranganath said. These particular disciplines are popular because "they have the potential to be more lucrative for them later."

The financial gains to be had from attracting Indian students are substantial enough.

"The U.S. realizes that the tuition money from international students is important to the economy," Ranganath said, noting that India is America's 21st largest overall export market at $9 billion as of November 2006.

The "internationalization" of a university like UC Davis provides opportunities for faculty, staff and students to learn about other cultures and countries," Ranganath said: "These students have a rich cultural heritage."

Haley Davis is a former Dateline writing intern.