GRE sees a 43 % rise

Updated on: Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Educationists and academicians feel that lack of research infrastructure and unique courses in Indian higher education institutions made 43 per cent more students take up Graduate Record Examination (GRE) last year from the country.

Prof C. Thangaraj, vice-chancellor, Anna University of Technology, Chennai said, we need to look whether these students are not satisfied with the education system in the country.

"Last three years the number of students taking GRE, TOFEL and IELTS trickled because of good job prospects in India and other avenues were also equally good but when you say the numbers increased in GRE then we need to see what's wrong", he said.

Pointing out that Indian higher education institutions lack research, Prof. Thangaraj said that most of the Indian universities affiliate several hundreds of colleges and it would not be possible for them to do research when they were mandated to regulate those colleges.

"We do not provide any incentive for faculty who do research and we are not able to commercialise research. In the US research is a profitable venture…they've got enough facilities for that and the money they spend is productive also. Even for a sample test we need to send samples to US and wait for the analysis, which takes a month.

So our researchers have lot of problems doing research in the country", he said Mr G. V. Sampath, vice-president (administration), VIT University said that United States of America provides good ambience for research, besides flexibility in courses. "Even one or two years after joining a course students are given the option to switch courses.

They also have a lot of courses in new and emerging fields. These enthuse students to go to US for taking up multi-disciplinary courses", he said.

Mr Sampath also pointed out that Indian government should provide grants for those who do good research.

"Government should not discriminate between government and private universities when they provide grants. Deemed universities like VIT also do excellent research so why does not government want to give funds only to government universities only", he asked.

It may be noted that eight lakh students took up GRE from various parts of the world in 2011, which shows an increase of 13 per cent over last year.

GRE sees a 43 % rise

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