POSTECH’s Indian community is its largest international student population; with an overall number approximately over 100. Here, 75% Indians in POSTECH are post doctorate and researchers and 25% are graduate students. We celebrate our festivals like Diwali and Independence Day and have get-together dinner parties on some special occasions on campus. We have invited the Vice President of the International Affairs to this year’s occasion where he announced that POSTECH will open an office in New Delhi, India.
As we all know, globalization is a very important factor for our university growth and development. In the last three years, I have noticed efforts made by the school to make the place more internationalized and as a consequence the strength of international community in our campus has increased every year. There are no doubts that POSTECH has improved its ranking in the world. We have reached the 28th place in the world according to the THE (Times Higher Education) rankings. We are studying in the one of best research-oriented universities. Indians have many expectations from POSTECH.
As an Indian student, in the past three years, I have seen many good changes in our university. POSTECH has improved in terms of its research environment and continues to provide very good facilities for foreign students to make their life easy and comfortable. One of them is the formation of DICE (Dormitory for International and Culture Exchange). In DICE, we get to know more about Korean culture and traditions, and interact with different students from all over the world. A kitchen is also one of the essential facilities for foreigners, who have problems with the cafeteria food and can cook at DICE.
Even though we have reached in the top 30 universities in the world, still, life is not easy for foreigners in POSTECH in some ways other than welfare. I have seen some students who left POSTECH, unsatisfied with the research atmosphere or with policies. Some confessed that they can get a better scholarship in India compared to POSTECH. We have to seriously think whether the scholarship that we are giving to Ph.D. students is sufficient at the international level. Are we providing sufficient support to ensure that they do not think of leaving POSTECH? Are we providing a good atmosphere to them?
Also, POSTECH should always try to give a good impression to the visiting students. Last summer, some Indian students had problems with their professors, who expected too much from only internship students. We invited international internship students to provide them with chances to explore the POSTECH research environment so that when they graduate from their universities, they will think of joining POSTECH. Also, if they had a good impression, they would encourage others to join by giving positive feedback about POSTECH when they return to their institutes. There is a university named the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) that belongs to the top 20 in world rankings in terms of engineering and technology and the students there are some of the best students in India. The declining number of those students coming to POSTECH may indicate that POSTECH is not getting strong positive feedback compared to other universities. I think that we should try hard to attract not only the Indian IIT students but also other qualified students worldwide, starting from making a good impression on even the visiting students. Once we do that, I am sure more will come to POSTECH as regular students. In the future, I hope our problems will be resolved and I look forward to the growth and development of POSTECH. We all love POSTECH and we are proud to be Postechians.
Prashant Kumar
PhD. Candidate (MATH)
