Study Abroad News & Alerts

CBSE is planning to modify the framework for class 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th because of the New Education Policy. One of the new implementations that CBSE might make for class 10th and 12th is introducing a credit based education system. This means that all the subjects for these classes will have certain credit weightage. Students will have to choose subjects that fulfil the minimum credit criteria. This is a policy that is in line with NEP. A full year will consist of 1200 learning hours or 40 credits. Learning hours simply means the amount of time a student has to spend throughout the year to learn a particular subject. It will be compulsory for all students to spend this amount of time to get passed in a particular subject. The grading system is also going to be modified and students will be given grades from A1 to E. The catch here is that students will not be given grades on their absolute marks, but the relative rankings.

The JEE mains answer key for phase 1 exams that were conducted earlier is out. Students can download the answer key from the official website of JEE or NTA’s official website. Other than the answer key, NTA has also released the question paper along with the attempted answers of a particular candidate. So students can easily calculate their percentile based on the released answer key and their responses. In case students have a problem with a certain answer from the answer key, they will have to pay Rs.200 to submit their doubts. This is non-refundable money. More than 11,00,00 students appeared for the phase 1 exam. The marking scheme of JEE is quite simple. A student is awarded four marks for a correct answer. For a wrong answer, there is a negative marking of 1.

IIT Gandhinagar is inviting candidates from around the country to apply for its PhD program. Interested candidates will have to give a written test and then pass an interview round to get selected. Interested students can directly apply on the website of the university. The deadline to apply for the program is 20 March, 2024. The institute is offering a PhD degree in various fields, including chemical engineering, civil engineering, chemistry, earth system science, artificial intelligence, humanities and social science, society and culture and many other subjects. The applications will be shortlisted on the basis of a provisional criteria. Only the students selected will be able to give a written exam. The provisional criteria will be released on 3rd April, 2024 and the written exam is scheduled to be conducted on 8th April, 2024

IIM Ahmedabad has been ranked as the number one management Institute in India by IIRF MBA Ranking 2024. The Faculty of Management Studies by Delhi University has been ranked at the second position. at number three is IIM, Calcutta, followed by IIM Bangalore and then IIM Kozhikode. In 2023, FMS was given the top spot, but this year it has come down to the second position.

Some other institutes that have made it to the list include IIM Lucknow, XLRI, SP Jain Institute Of Management, Symbiosis Institute of Business Management and many more. These rankings have been released by the Indian Institute of Ranking Framework. More than 300 business schools from the country have been assessed for this ranking. Over 50 government colleges and 160 colleges or universities have taken part. 

France has now started the service of Digital Schengen visa and has officially become the first country in the European Union to do so. France is planning to digitalise everything related to visas by the end of 2026. Initially the services have only been launched for members of the Olympic or Paralympic community. This includes judges, athletes, board members, associates, technicians, medical personals, or any other involved person. People falling under this category will not have to wait for visas in long lines. All they have to do is just show up at the visa centre and get accredited by showing their passport. On the other hand, any spectator who wants to enjoy the games will have to apply through the physical mode only. The digital visa has been launched to check its performance and viability. If it works out for the time being, then France will launch it for a bigger market segment before making visas fully digitalised.

The admit cards for classes 10th and 12th have been released by CBSE. Students can download the final admit cards from the official website of CBSE. On the admit card, candidates will be able to see their examination roll number, examination dates and centre. The board exam will be conducted in a single shift from 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM on a regular basis. It is compulsory for all the candidates to carry the admit cards to the examination centre to be able to give exams. The final board exams for both class 10th and 12th are going to start from 15th February, 2024. m

Mostly it is the responsibility of respective schools to distribute admit cards among students. But in case the school doesn't distribute the admit cards, students can also download it by themselves by entering some personal details. Everything from examination code to reporting time as well as rules and regulations to be followed in the hall will be mentioned on the admit card.

The Jawaharlal Nehru University, which is one of the most prestigious universities in India joins the bandwagon by offering some short term online courses to students. This year, JNU is planning to expand its e-learning infrastructure by offering an array of online courses in different fields. The university is even developing a special room dedicated to online teaching that will have all the necessary gadgets. Most of these courses are going to be four week-long and will have a weightage of 15 credits. Initially, somewhere between 6 to 8 short-term online programs will be launched to assess their performance and the feedback of students. 

Most of these courses will be in various disciplines like political science, international relations, language and social sciences. These courses will be available on JNU’s Diggi Campus and the SWAYAM portal. The university is planning to expand its online courses on a national level.

IIT Madras becomes the first IIT to introduce a sports quota for undergraduate courses. Two seats in the undergraduate courses will be reserved for sports quota from now on. This new initiative will be implemented from the 2024-2025 academic session. Out of these two seats, one will remain reserved for female students. It will be compulsory for the student to appear for the JEE advanced exam and secure a position in the Common Rank List. 

The counselling however, will not happen to the common JoSAA portal and a separate portal will be built for students who want to apply through the sports quota. Currently none of the IITs have a sports quota as compared to other premier institutes like Delhi University that has been offering sports quota to students for years now. The idea of introducing a sports quota was being discussed in the institute from last year. This year, the institute finalised on the policy and it is now going to be implemented.

The Union Finance Minister of India, Nirmala Sitharamam has announced during the presentation of the interim budget 2024 that the government is planning to set up new medical colleges in the country under the education budget 2024. The finance minister further went on to say that many young students in India live a dream of becoming a doctor. But due to the shortage of government medical institutes in the country, admission in medical schools has become extremely competitive.

By building more medical colleges in the country, there will be a lower outflow of Indian students to foreign countries and also the healthcare system of India will be strengthened. The finance minister further added that a proper committee is going to be organised to build more medical colleges in the country. During the presentation of the budget, Nirmala Sitharaman also highlighted that the involvement of females in the higher education system has gone up by 28% in the past 10 years. In STEM courses, there has been an increase of 43% of participation of women, which is a significant mark.

The National Testing Agency has revised the dates for JEE mains exam session 2. The session 2 exams will be held from 4th April to 15th April. Initially the exams had to start from 1st April but now the dates have been revised considering the board exams for class 12th. The registration process for the session 2 exam has already been started. The portal will remain open for registration till 2nd March, 2024.

Candidates who had appeared for the session 1 exam are also eligible to appear for the session 2 exam. They will have to login through their previous enrolment number to register again. All the details like the mode of the examination, the exam that one wants to give, centre preference and everything else has to be selected again.

St George's University is offering scholarships to international students through its School of Medicine. All international students who want to pursue a medical degree from the university are eligible for the scholarship. This is a scholarship that is going to be offered on the basis of academic merit and  previous scores of the students. This award will be known as the SGU award and it will be open for all the incoming students who want to take admission in the coming intake of St George's University.

This scholarship will be covering the tuition fees, the living expenses and some other expenses of the students. A pre- decided amount will be given to students to support their education. Once the deductions are made based on the necessary payments like tuition fees and living expenses, the student will be given the rest of the amount on a monthly basis. The rest of the amount will be used to fulfil their financial requirements.

Due to the political tension between India and Canada, Canada lost 86% of international students from India. In the fourth quarter only 14,900 visas were issued to Indian students which is very low as compared to other quarters. In 2022, 41% of the total student visas that were issued were given to Indian students. However, one of the major reasons why Canada has decided to put a curb on international students is not just because of political tensions. There has been a major housing crisis in the country. 

Students are not able to find accommodation and a certain black market is also emerging because of the same reason. This was one of the major reasons why Canada increased the minimum financial requirement criteria in the beginning of 2024 and made it double. But the problem of housing will remain the same if a huge number of students keep coming to the country every year. To solve this problem, Canada decided to put a restriction on the number of international students that can come to the country every year.

Under the New Education Policy, the importance of summer programs in internships has been specified. Highlighting the policy, the UGC has also released a lot of guidelines related to internships and placements during undergraduate courses. Recently UCC released some latest guidelines related to an internship guide for college going students. These guidelines resonate with the New Education Policy and target to increase the efficiency, capability and confidence of students during their college years. UGC has drafted a letter to vice chancellors and principals of various colleges to put a light on the growing need of developing cells dedicated to offer internship opportunities to students. The job of UGC is to also look if these policies are being implemented honestly or not.

As per latest news, Australia might be planning to put a curb on international students very much like Canada. Due to the sudden explosion of international students, the country is worried about the quality of education being offered to international students. Initially Australia introduced a lot of generous policies to attract international students. This was done to compensate the loss endured by the country during the pandemic. Students were allowed to work part-time for as much time as they wanted to even if the classes were going on. Slowly, all these rules were taken back as students started going to Australia and the education system became more normal. 

Now, due to the sudden influx of international students, many politicians are worried about the quality of life that Australia will be offering. Very much like Canada, Australia is also facing a problem of shortage of housing and rise in rents as well as groceries. The number of part-time jobs available for international students are also quite low. This might call for a new rule that might impose restrictions on the inflow of international students in the country.

In the annual budget, the government of India has cut the funds of the University Grants Commission by 61%. UGC is responsible for undertaking and supervising the education system in higher education institutes of India. On the other hand, there has been an increase of Rs.500 crores for school education in the country. As compared to previous year, where UGC was allocated a fund of Rs.9600 crores, this year only 2500 crores have been allocated to the institution. The budget allotment for IIMs has also been cut twice in a row. The government of India has put more focus on school education as compared to the higher education institutes. There has also been a marginal dip in the budget allotted to IITs. During the budget presentation, the finance minister of India, Nirmala Sitharaman has said that the government has focused a lot on increasing the number of IITs and IIMs  in the previous years. This year the government will focus more on school education.

CUET has extended the deadline for the registration of PG courses. Initially the deadline was 25th December, 2023. It was then pushed to 31st December, 2023. Now once again, the deadline has been pushed to 7th February, 2024. Candidates can submit their application fee by 8th February, 11:50 PM. The entrance exam for CUET PG will take place in March among various shifts. NTA is expected to release the admit cards for students in the first week of March. After the successful conduction of the exam, the preliminary answer key will be released in the first week of April.

Students who want to register for the exam can visit the official website of CUET PG. On the homepage, students will find the link for the registration. Their students can fill the application form and submit all their documents correctly.

NTA will be starting the registration process for the JEE Mains session 2 from second February, 2024. After the successful conduction of session 1, NTA will start registering candidates for session 2. Candidates interested in applying for the exam can do so by the official website of NTA JEE. Several documents such as passport, size, photos, scanned image of signature, any category or PwD certificate if applicable must be uploaded.

The application fee for both paper 1 and paper 2 is Rs.1000 for general male candidates. For general female candidates it is Rs.800. Male students belonging to EWS or OBC category will have to pay Rs.900 for the registration. Any candidate from SC, ST and PwD category will have to pay Rs.500.

As per reports, CBSE has introduced a new proposal to implement the mandatory studying of three languages till class 10th. Out of these three languages, two must be natively Indian. Furthermore, the concept of introduction of 10 compulsory subjects in class 10th might also be under consideration. As opposed to the previous five subjects, class 10 students will have to get passed in 10 different subjects to be able to get into the next class.

For class 12th, the proposal is to introduce another language and make them study two languages instead of only one. Out of these two languages, one must be from native Indian origin. Overall class 12th students must study at least 6 subjects and pass them to graduate high school. This proposal is right now under consideration and the government might bring some new changes to the proposal in the coming time as well.

President of France, Emmanuel Macron recently announced that trance will be launching international classes in India to teach French to Indian people. France is aiming to attract 30,000 students from India every year by 2030. Students who are interested in studying France can apply on the website started by the same name. These classes will be launched in India on 1st September, 2024.

This is a joint initiative started by the President of France and the Prime Minister of India. Any student who completes a beginner level French course from these French classes will be allowed to pursue an undergraduate and postgraduate programme in France. This program is open to all students irrespective of their proficiency in French.

Recently Deakin University from Australia opened its international campus in India. This became the first university from Australia to open a campus in India. The new education policy released in 2020 discussed the importance of creating international campuses of top universities in the country. UGC also released guidelines regarding the same where a university featuring in the top 500 list will be allowed to open an international campus in India. The initial permission has only been given for 10 years. Opening new campuses of international universities in India might be a new challenge since there is a huge college going population in India. Every year more than four crore students in India go to college and the education budget allowance in the country always falls short for the same. This is the reason why the government is not able to invest in the Indian institutes and their rankings keep on declining. establishing foreign campuses in India is not only a good way of preventing brain drain but also attracting international students from different countries.