Professor Anton Muscatelli, the principal and vice-chancellor of University of Glasgow, in an interaction with FE?s Vikram Chaudhary, talks about the University of Glasgow?s commitment to expanding its activities and partnerships in India. Excerpts:
What are the current tie-ups the University of Glasgow has in India?
The University of Glasgow is committed to expanding its activities and partnerships in India, working on projects of mutual interest with Indian universities. Currently our academics are visiting a number of partners throughout the country. We have existing partnership agreements with University of Delhi, University of Calcutta, University of Navrachana (Gujarat), IIT Ropar and IISER Pune which we are hoping to expand.
We are also actively seeking to increase staff and student exchanges with Indian institutes, aiming to have more summer school programmes, developing joint degrees and increasing our joint research activities. In fact, we are in the early stages of developing an India-Scotland Knowledge Forum to bring together all the academics in the University of Glasgow with research interests focused on India.
Have you launched any new programmes?
We are always updating our programmes to meet the needs of students, and many of our degrees are highly relevant to international students, including Indians. The University of Glasgow Adam Smith Business School attracts the highest number of Indian students and we have launched new masters degrees?MSc Finance & Management, MSc Asset Pricing & Investment and MSc Investment Fund Management. Our MBA is also a big draw for Indian students. A big area of growth in India is life sciences and biotechnology. Here also we have relaunched masters degrees in bioinformatics, polyomics and systems biology.
What about helping students find jobs?
Helping students find jobs after graduating is very important and we have taken a number of measures to help achieve this, including embedding more industrial links and placements in our programmes and also in recruiting a graduate opportunities manager who makes connections with employers in India and an enterprise manager who helps students develop business ideas.
And visa regulations?
Recent changes to the visa regulations have seen a doubling of the number of graduate entrepreneur visas to 1,000 and the University of Glasgow has been awarded the maximum number of 20 visas that we can sponsor. Half of these will be given to the MBA students.