yderabad: Premier institutions have better chances of figuring in global ranking lists, courtesy of a few reforms being introduced in the higher education sector.

From the next academic year, international students will be allowed, for the first time, to pursue their masters and even undergraduate study in leading technology institutes like IITs, NITs and IIITs.

As a first step, GATE-2017, a qualifying exam for pursuing M.Tech/M.E study, would be held in countries like the UAE, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Ethiopia in Africa.

The presence of international students is one of the criteria for global agencies issuing rankings; IITs and other institutions fare poorly on this count. Apart from international students, the aim is to attract students from NRI families to do their masters in their homeland.

According to education expert M.V. Reddy the low cost of fees will work in India’s favour. “In the US or the UK, the masters in engineering will easily cost `20 lakh or above. Foreign students can complete it at less than one-third of the cost in India,” he said.

GATE-2017 will be held in February next year. IIT-Roorkee will be conducting the exam and the chairman of the organising committee has issued a statement about conducting the exam abroad. Each year nearly 9.5 lakh students take the exam for about 20,000 M.Tech seats across IITs, NITs, IIITs, Central and state universities.