A question of quality

Updated on: Monday, July 04, 2011

The state of Victoria, Australia, is offering 10 doctoral scholarships to Indian research scholars. Geoffrey Conagham, Victoria's Commissioner to India, speaks to Diptiman Dewan about the initiative

With the Australian government having made changes to its visa rules to allow inflow of migrants with specific skills required by the country's labour market, the government of the state of Victoria has gone a step ahead and announced the 'Victoria India Doctoral Scholarships Programme' for PhD researchers. Under the programme, 10 doctoral scholars from India will be awarded scholarships amounting to AUD 90,000 each, to complete their PhDs at one of Victoria's nine universities, starting in 2012.

"This is a quality, not a quantity initiative. The Victorian government will pay the scholarship, and the universities, because they will get premium Indian research scholars, have agreed to waive the research fee," explained Geoffrey Conagham, Victoria's Commissioner to India.

If one includes the waiver by the colleges, which is roughly about AUD 35,000 a year, over a period of three years, the total scholarship amount would add up to approximately 200,000 dollars, Conagham added.

The participating universities include Deakin University, La Trobe University, Monash University, RMIT University, Swinburne University, Australian Catholic University, University of Melbourne, University of Ballarat and Victoria University.

The available fields of research are broad and the scholarship has no age bars for researchers to apply. Collectively, Victoria offers doctoral opportunities across science, engineering, medicine, the social sciences and humanities, business studies, education and the arts, with each of the participating universities well-established in its field.
"These are highly specialised research opportunities and we want people who are eminent in their fields and on their way up, to join this programme. The fields can be as diverse as archaeology or reproductive health in medicine ; education, policy or history," said Conagham.

The state of Victoria has a multicultural community with an Indian population of about 200,000, who are first and second generation Indians settled in the state.

Conagham says that besides better security measures, initiatives like the welcome desk at the Melbourne airport, a 24-hour help-centre for students, and the Victoria culture card which is given to all foreign students to help them move out of their own community huddles and mix with other nationalities including the wider Australian community, have all been taken into account to help students to be led in the right direction, when they come to a new country.

www.studymelbourne.vic.gov.au/

Times of India

A question of quality

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