Benefits of Semester Exchange
A lot of people would agree that spending a semester away is a great learning experience. But somehow the mental block is that it is a great learning experience only if it is abroad, in a foreign university. The next mental step in any such thought experiment is that it would be terribly expensive and hence not worth considering.
We think like that since we haven't seen any exchange program within the country. The student mobility within India is rather limited. NEP2020 is trying to change that and strongly encourages universities to consider credits earned from other universities for giving a degree.
J K Lakshmipat University (JKLU), Jaipur is a pioneer in student mobility within India. It was the first one to realize that whatever benefits are accrued to a student while studying abroad, can also accrue when s/he studies in another college within India. For example, learning different cultures. The difference in culture across India is vast and it can be very enriching experience for a student to spend a semester in different parts of the country. You get broader understanding of issues, become more tolerant of differences, and these traits help you a lot when you join a company with employees from different parts of the country or indeed different parts of the globe. When one gets out of one's comfort zone, one becomes more confident, a better communicator, and so on.
It is even more important in India. Everyone who took JEE wanted to study in a top college like IITs, but because of limited seats, could only manage to join a less endowed university. Spending a semester at an IIT can be very fulfilling to such students. Each institution will have its areas of strengths. When a student goes to study in a new institution, s/he will benefit from studying those courses which this institution can do a better job then their home institution. You make new friends.
From the university perspective, they are able to provide a better experience and better learning to their students. And when students come back after spending a semester in some top institution, they bring back the best practices of that place and help the university move faster towards excellence.
We have been encouraging our students, particularly in engineering, to spend a semester away. We have relationships with several IITs, IIIT Delhi, IIIT Hyderabad, and for those who can afford it, even with several universities abroad. More than a quarter of our students do end up spending a semester elsewhere. We make it easier for the students by not charging the tuition if the student is registered elsewhere. (Those few universities in India who do allow student mobility mostly insist that their tuition be paid along with the tuition at the other institution - so the student will end up paying double for spending the semester elsewhere. We don't do this.) And we have been doing this for many years now, long before NEP2020.
One fear that students had in early years was the fear of poor performance in an IIT. But as time progressed, our students have realized that they perform as well in those institutions as their own students because of the strong basic education they got at JKLU before going out for a semester.
It has been my passion to encourage student mobility in India, and I have been writing about such semester exchanges for over two decades. So I am delighted to see that JKLU has been doing it for so many years and so many students are taking advantage of this.
If many of our students are benefitting from going out, it is also our duty to host students of other institutions on our campus. And we look forward to doing that if anyone is interested.
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