Visit builds links with India and Sri Lanka

Our Vice-Chancellor Professor Anthony Forster visited India and Sri Lanka to forge new partnerships with universities and businesses.

His visit saw him promoting education, developing research links and meeting our alumni.

Essex is seen as an increasingly attractive destination for talented Indian students who can benefit from an Essex Education with applications up significantly up on previous years.

The University of Essex has also secured funding from the UK Government’s Global Capacity Research Fund (GCRF), a £1.5 billion fund targeted at supporting cutting-edge research which addresses the challenges faced by developing countries including India.

Professor Forster said: “This is my second visit to India and Sri Lanka in the last 12 months, reflecting the importance the University of Essex attaches to both countries.

"Amazingly talented Indian students have chosen to come to study at our UK campuses over many years. Our latest visit focused on ensuring that we continue to attract Indian students to Essex by showing how much we have to offer.

“We signed Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with a range of private and public universities to develop education and research partnerships. We also took the chance to meet our alumni.

“The visit was a perfect opportunity for us to raise the profile of Essex and highlight our recent success at the Times Higher Education awards where we were named as University of the Year.”

“It was also a chance to talk about the opportunities that exist for strengthening ties with India and Sri Lanka, following the UK’s departure from the EU.”

Essex has responded to the needs and expectations of Indian students by adding work placement experience to most of our undergraduate degree courses – and in a bold step added an integrated one year work placement into our Masters degrees in data science, curating, economics, accounting and banking and commercial and business law.

Essex is also part of a U.K. government pilot offering a six month post-study work visa which is having a positive effect on recruitment and our reputation as a trusted institution.

Indian students are applying for a much wider range of courses at Essex than ever before extending beyond Law, Accountancy and Business Studies, to Analytics and Data Science, Social Sciences and Humanities – and at the undergraduate as well as postgraduate levels.

During his visit Professor Forster took part in a TV panel on Brexit and Higher Education, a radio interview and a seminar on the impact of Brexit at the British Council.

In New Delhi he visits visited GD Goenka University where he signed a MOU, OP Jindal University, Jamia Millia Islamia University, in Bengaluru he visited the Indian Institute of Science – the highest ranked Indian university in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings , Jain University and Christ University.

In Sri Lanka visits were made to Horizon Campus to sign a MOU, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka to develop a scholarship programme and Peradeniya University in Kandy.