Divvy Kant Upadhyay, Manipal (GA)
Daijiworld Media Network - Udupi (GA)

Udupi, Jun 10: Indian hospitality is world renowned. Here the guests are welcomed with gastronomic delights, with flowers, tilaks, and what not. But four young lads from France -Ayman, Xavier, Yann and Benjamin, who landed in Mangalore last week, were in for a surprise. The first thing their hosts offered them was umbrellas.

The four French students who have come to do their projects at the Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT), Manipal were left clean bowled with the heavy showers and thunderstorms that hit the region over the weekend.

The young Frenchmen who began their two-month-long internships at MIT on Monday June 8 are here thanks to a student exchange programme between Manipal University (MU) and the Esigelec University in Normandy, France.

What started as a friendship between two neighbouring stalls at an education fair in Pune transformed into a very productive educational and cultural relationship. For the last three years, a number of students and faculty from Manipal have gone to France and Esigelec students have come to Manipal.

International borders are becoming irrelevant keeping in mind the speed at which the knowledge and education sector is expanding globally. Keeping with the trend, the two universities are moving a step ahead from student and faculty exchanges.

Speaking to Daijiworld Media Network, Registrar of International programmes at MU, Dr H Vinod Bhat informed that from September this year MU is planning to offer a Dual Degree programme in ‘VLSI and Embedded Systems’ in association with France’s Esigelec University. “This would be a graduate degree course partly done at Manipal and partly at Rouen in Normandy,” says Dr Bhat who already has signed several MoUs with International Universities in Medical, Engineering, Management and Hospitality sectors, twelve of them in the last few months. He is hoping for greater cooperation from the French industrial sector. He had been invited for a network meeting to Esigelec on their silver jubilee celebrations last year. That is where the Dual Degree programme which is about to start this year materialized.

The French students acknowledge that they will take time to settle down but they are already amazed having spicy Indian food in the college canteen. They were happy to note that France has strong ties with Manipal and last year there was a ‘France Week’ at Manipal. The students are only hoping to actively participate in the ‘France Week’ to be held later this year in the University Town.