Indian students are very interested in Engg, MBA courses: Prof McGregor - Provost & Vice Principal HWU, Dubai

Professor Heather McGregor - Provost and Vice Principal of HWU, Dubai speaking with Shiksha.com discusses why international universities setting up campuses in UAE making it more cost effective and accessible to Indian students.

Heriot-Watt University Dubai was the first British University to set up a campus in Dubai offering range of research-informed degree programmes, including new age programmes such as degrees in Artificial Intelligence, Sustainable Engineering and more in line with the changing business landscape. Professor Heather McGregor - Provost and Vice Principal of HWU, Dubai speaking with Shiksha.com discusses why international universities setting up campuses in UAE making it more cost effective and accessible to Indian students. Her plans for student recruitment from India and profile of students currently studying at the university and other plans of the university. Read the excerpts below…

Q. Heriot-Watt University is 200 year old university, known for its research and academics. How is the Dubai campus different from this university?
A. Well, so studying in Dubai I think is very interesting. We started in Dubai in 2005, so we have been there for 18 years now as a university, which is 201 years old. We were invited by the government to set up campus there. One of our big strengths is petroleum engineering. And that was a sort of reason for our very closeness. Eight out of 10 people over there do not have a UAE passport. So, we have over 4,400 students on campus.

Our student population in Dubai have 115 different nationalities. Of my 4,418 students, if you really want to count, 1,960 of them have an Indian passport. So I have got a 50% Indian contingent and 114 nationalities in the rest. Nearly three-quarters of them are local students. I define a local student as somebody who was born and grew up in Dubai rather than an Emirati. I would expect our number of Emirati students to increase in the future because now our degrees can be attested by the Ministry of Education, which means that people getting our degrees can go to government jobs. A lot of Emiratis go into government jobs.

Indian-origin students are very interested in our engineering courses and very interested in our business courses. I think it's very vocational as well. We're a very vocational university anyway. And I think parents typically want a vocational degree. So we see people coming into very vocational degrees, but either business, which is finance, accountancy, actuarial, mathematics, or down the engineering route.

Q. You have a campus in Dubai, you have a campus in Malaysia. The government of India is also trying to attract foreign universities to set up their campuses in India. Are you also looking for this option?

A: Well, first of all, there are really amazing universities in India. I would be very nervous about competing on domestic territory with other Indian universities. Secondly, I think at the moment that we are, you know, running this global operation with equivalency everywhere is challenging. And I think to add another campus, and I would never say never, but I would be wary of the competition.

Q. Tell us about HWUDs roadmap in terms of India admissions, new courses and programs that you're planning. And if you could share also the enrollment numbers that you have?
A: There are around 1,960 students with an Indian passport, this also includes local Indian origin students. There are around 250 students who are from India, which will be more in the coming year.
In Malaysia and in Dubai, if you get a student visa, you can work all the hours that you have. In fact, you know, I struggle sometimes to get people to come to class because they have a job. The visa situation sometimes drives the Indian student. In Malaysia our fees are very different because we have to compete, even though we are a global university, the stuff taught there is the same. Everything is the same. We are not a branch university, we are not a franchise. However, we have to compete with people who are, who are branch universities and franchises.

So our fees have to be lower. So, the student that goes there, that, that might drive their decision and so on. But in terms of curriculum development for Indian students, we have had to really look at our curriculum because although I've said they like engineering and they like business, what they really like is degrees where you get the chance to do some internships and jobs.
And this is a real hallmark of Indian students. So we've had to accommodate that by designing programs that allow for a placement as part of it.

Q. So you provide a hundred percent placement support to students?
A: We provide support, we do not guarantee the placement. We guarantee interviews, if I put the students in an interview and they bomb, I mean, I can't force the employer to take them, but we put a lot of support behind it. And statistically, very few people, a non-material number don't get a placement. And if they don't get a placement, they just transfer to a different kind of degree.

Q. Another thing that I want to understand, do you have a particular scholarship for Indian students.
A: We have a merit-based scholarship. So first of all, the better they do in their schools, in their CBSE results, the better it is. The first-ever master brewer in the whole of India trained with us in, in the 1940s, and we have three and a half thousand alumni students currently in India. So, for instance, a brewing and distilling scholarship just for Indian students and things like this. And we are encouraging some of our very wealthy alumni to support scholarships for Indian students as well as the merit-based stuff that we do.

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