King's College London invites Indian post-graduate students to apply for special awards 

King's College London has issued a callout to Indian students to apply in time to be eligible for the Vice-Chancellor's Awards, which comes with a 10,000-pound (about Rs 11,26,000) fee waiver to pursue a post-graduate degree geared towards making a wider societal impact.

The leading London-based university's Vice-Chancellor, Professor Shitij Kapur, said that he was particularly proud of these awards for Indian students, having himself left Delhi to pursue post-graduate studies abroad.

Kapur also highlighted the university's historic Indian connection, going back to when freedom fighter Sarojini Naidu was among its first female alumni in the nineteenth century.

“We were one of the earliest universities in the UK to teach Sanskrit and Bengali and Sarojini Naidu was one of our remarkable students in the very early days when King's started admitting female students,” said Kapur.

“In more recent times, we have seen a surge of applicants from India and one of the things we realised is that for many of them, the fees of a UK university is a barrier. So, to encourage more students, we came up with the Vice-Chancellor's Awards,” he said.

The awards, now in their second year, are open for 30 Indian students starting full-time, on-campus post-graduate study in London starting in September and they should have applied for their course by the end of April.

“We are particularly interested in how they will use the learnings from what they have decided to study at King's to make a difference to the communities to which they belong," said Kapur, who is also president of the multi-faculty university.

"It involves them writing about their academic qualifications, but it also requires them to highlight how the journey at King's fits into their longer-term journey of making the world a better place,” he added.

Having graduated from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Kapur went on to study and then teach in the US, Canada and Australia before taking up his current role at King's College London a few years ago.

Asked about the two-year Graduate Route visa which offers international students the chance to gain work experience at the end of their degrees, Kapur expressed optimism at that offer continuing to be a pull factor for Indian students.

“From the best we know, this government has not given any signals that threaten the core Graduate visa with the right to work and look for work over two years after graduation. If there is some talk, it's about setting the (salary) threshold for the skilled worker visa,” he said.